Competing in his first Olympics, the 21-year-old arrived with the nickname 'Quad God' having become the only skater to successfully land the quadruple axel.The move requires a skater to launch themselves into a jump, spin four and a half times in the air, and cleanly land backwards.But Malinin did not pull out this move at all in the Games, although it was registered in his planned elements. Indeed, in this final he only performed a single axel, to groans from the crowd.And, going for a quad lutz, he fell to the ice in a moment that made the Olympics stop.No-one expected it. And certainly no-one thought he would fall again, but he did just that two elements later.At the end, Malinin grabbed his hair and put his hands to his knees. As he left the ice he could only shake his head on the verge of tears. The Quad God, mortal.But this was a timid routine. The quad axel subbed for a single, a quad loop reduced to a double. Dreams, turned to rubble.On his quad salchow, he only executed a double, then fell. Reality hit, just like the ice.Malinin's free skate was the 15th best of the night. It earned just 156.33 points, more than 40 behind Shaidorov.He performed a backflip for the crowd's entertainment, but it seemed like a forlorn call to the good times of only last week.In the team event he had also landed the first legal backflip at an Olympic Games since US champion Terry Kubicka in 1976 - after which it was banned for safety reasons.Thanks in part to skaters like France's Surya Bonaly - who performed the move illegally but successfully at Nagano 1998 - the backflip is now legal again.Malinin became the first to land it at the Games since the ban was overturned, and did the flip again in the short program.But really, none of that mattered. And after the scores came in, Malinin went straight to Shaidorov to congratulate him.This is Kazakhstan's first Winter Olympic gold medal since Lillehammer 1994, when Vladimir Smirnov won the men's 50km cross-country skiing. That was 10 years before Shaidorov, 21, was born.After a slight slip on the quad lutz, Shaidorov kept his head when all about were losing theirs and produced two clean quad techniques of his own.All hail the new Quad God.