Japan’s Shoma Uno repeated as world figure skating champion after American Ilia Malinin attempted a record-tying six quadruple jumps in his free skate to earn the bronze medal.

Uno, 25 and the leader after Thursday’s short program, prevailed with five quad attempts (one under-rotated) in Saturday’s free skate. He finished, fell backward and lay on home ice in Saitama, soaking in a standing ovation amid a sea of Japanese flags. Japan won three of the four gold medals this week.

Silver medalist Cha Jun-Hwan became the first South Korean man to win a world championships medal.

Malinin, 18, planned the most difficult program of jumps in figure skating history — six quads, including a quad Axel. Malinin is the only person to ever land a quad Axel in competition and did so again Saturday but had landing errors on his other quads.

FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Results

Malinin was followed by Frenchman Kévin Aymoz, who before the pandemic was the world’s third-ranked skater behind Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu, then placed ninth, 11th and 12th at the last three global championships.

Jason Brown, a two-time U.S. Olympian, was fifth with two clean programs in his first international competition since last year’s Olympics.

Earlier Saturday, Madison Chock and Evan Bates became the oldest couple to win an ice dance world title and the second set of Americans to do so. More on that here.

World championships highlights air Saturday from 8-10 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com/live and the NBC Sports app.

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Shoma Uno repeats as world figure skating champion; Ilia Malinin tries 6 quads for bronze originally appeared on NBCSports.com