Azerbaijani judge Klyushnikov's lower evaluation of Litvintsev than the official protocol at the Olympics, and other differing scores: Idman.Biz review

The scores given by judge Yuri Klyushnikov, representing Azerbaijan in the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, differed significantly from the official protocol.

Idman.Biz reports that special attention was focused on the performance of Azerbaijani athlete Vladimir Litvintsev. In the official protocol, he took 29th place with 63.63 points. However, Klyushnikov, who also represents Azerbaijan, rated Litvintsev's performance lower, giving him 63.13 points, which is 0.5 points less than the official result. It is clear that Litvintsev did not perform well, but despite representing the same country, Ukrainian-born Klyushnikov could have increased the score for the Azerbaijani athlete a little.

It seems that this would not have helped Litvintsev to qualify for the free program stage, but it seems a bit strange that a judge from the same country gave his athlete a lower score than the official protocol.

The differences in scores given to other athletes are more noticeable. The most notable is with Russian Pyotr Gumennik, who competed under neutral status: in the official protocol, he was 12th with 86.72 points, but rose to 4th place in Klyushnikov's personal ranking. According to the Azerbaijani judge, his total score was 96.96.

Significant changes were also observed in other participants. Georgian Nika Egadze was fifth instead of 15th according to Klyushnikov's assessment. Kazakhstani Mikhail Shaidorov, on the contrary, fell from fifth place in the official protocol to 12th place in the judge's personal list. Andrew Torgashev from the USA dropped from 8th to 17th place, and Stephen Gogolev from Canada dropped from 10th to 16th place.

At the same time, the top three remained unchanged: Ilya Malinin from the USA, Yuma Kagiyama representing Japan, and Adam Siao Him Fa from France retained their positions in both the official protocol and Klyushnikov's assessments. Thus, the main difference in the Azerbaijani judge's assessments at the 2026 Olympic Games was observed in the middle ranks and among athletes outside the top 3.