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 and took bronze at last year’s worlds, 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 free-skate 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 display of sheer athleticism in the sport’s centuries-spanning history.
“I didn’t even realize what was going on,” Malinin told a gallery of more than 100 reporters in Saturday’s aftermath. “I was just flying through the program.”
Ilia Malinin = WORLD CHAMPION 🥇
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) March 24, 2024
After landing SIX quads in his free skate, the 19-year-old broke the world record free skate score with 227.79 points. #WorldFigure pic.twitter.com/Old6yOwLcQ
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 of his own but clattered to the ice following a triple axel midway through his program.
“I will be competing for years to come against (Malinin),” Kagiyama said through a translator. “When I see him at the next competition, if we both perform at our 100% ability, I don’t think that I will be able to win against him.”
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.
“When I got into that starting position, I knew that this could be the best skate of my life, or it could go terribly wrong,” Malinin said. “I just thought to keep myself under control and to be as confident as possible and try to attack everything. Just going through every element at a time slowly. Hearing the crowd cheer more and more and feeling that energy, especially the second half after the footwork.”
He added: “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, who has more than lived up to his @quadg0d Instagram handle, 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.
Earlier Saturday, the American ice dance team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates won their second straight world title to cap an undefeated season with a free dance set to a medley from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It marked the first time the United States won two disciplines at a single world championships since 1996, when Michelle Kwan and Todd Eldridge took the ladies’ and men’s singles, respectively.
