MONTREAL – Ilia Malinin stood on the edge of the Bell Center ice late Saturday night, with figure skating’s world championship there to be seized, and he told himself to take it.
“I wanted to end this competition,” he said.
That’s when he decided to try the quadruple axel; his sport’s hardest jump, a leap so terrifying that most skaters won’t attempt it. Until Malinin, the sandy-haired 19-year-old American star from Vienna, Va, became the only person to land the jump two years ago, many skaters thought it would never be done. It’s the one thing he holds over everyone else.
As long as he can land it, which is something he hasn’t always done. It is, after all, the hardest jump.
But Saturday, he did land the quad axel. Then he followed it with five more quad jumps, all landed cleanly in a dazzling performance that earned him the highest score ever for a free skate, 227.79, which won him his first World Figure Skating Championship by 24 points over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama.
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When it was over, Malinin collapsed to the ice and lay flat on his back, staring at the arena’s ceiling, his eyes wide with disbelief. He looked as if he might cry.
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) March 24, 2024Ilia Malinin = WORLD CHAMPION 🥇
See AlsoWorld Figure Skating Championships: Ilia Malinin lands quad Axel on his way to first world titleAfter 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
“I couldn’t even hold myself up,” he said. “I just couldn’t. There was so much to take in at one moment.”
In recent weeks he had lost the bravado that has carried him on his meteoric rise through the skating world the past two years. Several of his recent skates have lacked the crispness of previous programs. He has complained about his skates not feeling right and injuries, the most significant of which he describes vaguely as being in his left foot, refusing to add more detail.
He felt off enough in the past couple weeks to suggest he might not come to the worlds, a ridiculous suggestion considering he has won the past two U.S. championships and took the bronze medal at the 2023 world championships. At the last minute he decided to come, yet still sounded uncertain.
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His short skate Thursday was clean but lacked the swagger of the past. He finished third that day and said later that he didn’t have enough energy.
“It definitely got to me that now’s the chance, you’re not out of this,” he said he thought afterward.
But, even determined to fight on Saturday night, he didn’t feel the kind of confidence that told him he would be great in the free skate. He intentionally didn’t watch the other skaters and knew little about the three falls Japan’s Shoma Uno, the winner of the past two worlds, had just experienced, which knocked him from medal contention. Malinin didn’t want the scores to distract him. Nonetheless his warmup skate was not sharp and he worried he would struggle.
Then he stepped onto the ice for his skate and vowed to go big.
“I knew that this could be the best skate of my life or it could go terribly wrong,” he later said.
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The axel came first but even after hitting it perfectly, drawing a gasp from the crowd, he still didn’t feel fully in control. Then he landed three more quads: a lutz, loop and salchow — feeling stronger with each.
“This can be it,” he thought.
By then the fans inside the Bell Center were standing, aware they were watching something extraordinary. They clapped to the music. Malinin pumped his fist. Several seconds remained in his skate but he knew he had already won.
“I’m still in shock,” he said more than an hour later while standing in a room under the stands. “I still can’t believe I did it.”
The past two years, even with the sizzling rise and the quad axel and his famed Instagram account, Malinin didn’t think he could have accomplished what he did Saturday night. He didn’t imagine having the calm and the composure he found before he stepped onto the ice and made the decision to attempt the sport’s hardest jump.
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Sitting beside Malinin in a news conference afterward, Kagiyama said he realized watching Malinin on Saturday that “if we both perform at our 100 percent ability I don’t think that I would be able to win against him.”
It was a sobering assessment.
Hearing Kagiyama’s words, Malinin smiled.
The doubts that had troubled him were gone, the cautiousness in his words replaced by a confidence that comes from a person who names their Instagram account “quadg0d.” In a matter of minutes he had become the best in the world, the favorite for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Someone asked him what was next and a smirk crawling across his face.
“Well, I’ll leave it as a surprise,” he said before adding: “as always."
Then the quadg0d walked out the room, out of the Bell Center and into a frigid Canadian night far bigger than when he had walked in a few hours before.
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Chock and Bates win worlds free skate championship
Earlier Saturday, the American ice dance team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates won their second straight world title, beating the Canadian team of Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier by 2.52 points. Chock and Bates, who plan to get married this summer and train in Montreal with an apartment just blocks from Bell Centre, have won all five of their competitions this season and took five of seven last year.
