Ilia Malinin ‘just went with the flow' in his soaring men's short program at World Figure Skating Championships

Boston Globe

28-03-2025

When Malinin returned to earth after pulling off a flawless quadruple flip jump, a triple axel, a quadruple Lutz-triple toe combination and his signature 'raspberry twist,' he'd already levitated the crowd from its seats.
And his score of 110.41 put him more than three points up on Yuma Kagimaya, his Japanese archrival, whose subsequent performance itself was beyond reproach.
Related
:
Advertisement
Nobody has beaten Malinin since two Decembers ago yet he confessed to having a few butterflies beforehand.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
'I felt really nervous, more than usual before,' the Quad God said. 'But when the music came on I just went with the flow and it just went from there.'
The short program, with its seven required elements that include jumps, spins and footwork wedged into 2 minutes and 40 seconds, is unsettling.
When Malinin won the crown last year in Montreal he placed third in the short behind Shoma Uno and Kagiyama because the quality of his spins were a bit wanting. They're markedly better now.
'His skating and his artistry are getting better year by year,' Kagiyama observed. 'So I'm starting to feel he's Lutz combo more than Kagiyama's quad toe combo. That's the advantage that the Quad God has over the rest of the contenders. If he lands what he brings he's all but impossible to outpoint.
Even if Malinin had taken a tumble or two in the short he would have been able to make it up in Saturday night's free skate where the quality and quantity of his quads (likely seven) is unsurpassed.
Back in the 6.0 scoring era when placements were based on ordinals (you can Google how they worked), a blown combination in the short program was fatal.
Advertisement
In 1996 Elvis Stojko, skating on home ice in Edmonton, was heavily favored to win a third straight crown. But he went down on his triple Axel-triple toe combo and was buried in seventh place.
'ELVIS IS DEAD,' a Canadian tabloid proclaimed. Stojko ended up fourth overall but his backside landing enabled a couple of Yanks — Todd Eldredge and Rudy Galindo — to win gold and bronze.
That was the last time that two Americans made the podium until Nathan Chen and Vincent Zhou did it in 2019.
With Andrew Torgashev and Jason Brown sitting in eighth and 12th that's almost certainly not going to happen here. But the larger objective for the Americans is to keep three entries for next winter's Olympics in Italy.
To do that the placements of their top two finishers here have to add up to no more than 13. Malinin can take care of most of that himself by making the podium for the third straight time.
His first appearance at Worlds in 2022 was a consolation prize for having been passed over for the Olympic team in favor of Zhou and Brown, both of whom had a more established body of work based on their seniority.
Malinin, who wanted badly to show off his quads, had a rocky free skate and ended up ninth. Since then he has perfected a repertoire that nobody else on the planet can match — quads of all six jumps in the same program most notably the Axel, which nobody else has landed.
Adding up the base values of his jumps Malinin is unbeatable on paper and he all but says so. 'I would consider myself to be my biggest rival,' he said before these championships. 'My motto is: I always like to compete against myself and push my own limit.'
Advertisement
American Ilia Malinin said he made an immediate connection with the TD
Garden crowd when he took the ice and heard the music. "I just went with the flow," he said.
Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
Malinin has become the man everyone comes to see, the blond astronaut who slips the surly bonds of ice and does it grinning. It's no accident that he'll be the last skater up in prime time on Saturday. The party starts at 9:44 p.m. sharp. Four minutes is all the Quad God will need.