Ilia Malinin, the Virginia teenager whose once-unimaginable array of quadruple jumps has enthralled the figure skating world over the past two years, completed his meteoric rise to the top of the sport on Saturday night by winning his first world championship.
The 19-year-old American prodigy, performing his free skate to a crowd-pleasing medley of music from the TV show Succession, became the second skater ever to land six quadruple jumps in a single program and the first to do it with a quad axel, the four-and-a-half-revolution jump that had never been landed in competition until Malinin pulled it off at the 2022 US Classic, when he was 17.
Malinin, who has won the past two US national championships, calmly drilled a quad axel, quad lutz, quad loop, quad salchow, another quad lutz in combination with a triple flip, a quad toe loop in combo with a triple toe, then added a triple lutz-triple axel combo to finish with a score of 227.79 before a rollicking crowd at the home of the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens, surpassing the world record held by 2022 Olympic gold medalist Nathan Chen.
Simply put, it was the greatest athletic performance in the sport’s centuries-spanning history.
Malinin’s combined score of 333.76 points was more than 24 points clear of Yuma Kagiyama (309.65), the Olympic silver medalist from Japan who landed three quads but clattered to the ice after landing a triple axel midway through his program.
France’s Adam Siao Him Fa (284.39), skating free after a disappointing 19th-place finish in Thursday’s short program, salvaged the bronze after landing four quads on Saturday despite an illegal back flip that didn’t affect his standing.
“I was definitely really focused,” an elated Malinin said afterward. “The past couple of weeks leading up to it have been tough for me I had a lot of problems, injuries, boot problems. I looked at the jumps that for me are the most consistent and are the easiest for me to replicate no matter how tired or how much pressure I have. I’m glad I just kept going and believed in myself, and my family to support me and I was able to come here and deliver that tonight.”
Malinin dethroned the two-time defending world champion Shoma Uno from Japan, who slipped to fourth after falling on his attempted quad loop and quad flip at the start of his program.
