For Ilia Malinin, figure skating’s ‘Quad God,’ all that’s left is Olympic superstardom – The Athletic

IRVINE, Calif. — Ilia Malinin sprawled out on the ice, his arms spread wide. His blonde-colored mane rested on the hood of his black sweatshirt while his black skates with fat red laces dangled in the air.

The greatest figure skater in the world. On his back.

Malinin missed his rotation just enough not to land flush on his right outside edge. The most minor miscalculation can botch a landing.

“It is brutal, yeah,” he said, a smile breaking out. “One small mistake and your body’s gonna be aching.”

The fall wasn’t violent or even dramatic, save for the person who tumbled. Witnessing Malinin fall is akin to seeing Simone Biles miss a vault or Victor Wembanyama miss a dunk.

But spills come naturally to expert technicians chasing perfection. Including Malinin. And the ice is frigid and stubborn. So uncompromising as to turn hard heads into soft behinds. The ice punishes the slightest miscalculations, demands the sharpest of focus. It chastises the audacious. Malinin hears its taunts.

He gave in to this fall, surrendering his limbs to the momentum. He took a second to sit in the failure, sliding slowly on the ice, his face pointed toward the ceiling of the Great Park Ice & FivePoint Arena, frustration in his sunken blue eyes.

It’s the side of Malinin most will never see, especially not when he takes the grandest stage at next month’s Winter Olympics. But this view illustrates exactly why he’s expected to be anointed a superstar in Milan. Why the “Quad God” — Malinin’s nickname, earned by his proficiency in four-rotation jumps, known as quadruples (or “quads”) — figures to become a household name.

Since the 2022 Olympics, Malinin has become the dominant force in men’s figure skating. He hasn’t lost in competition in over two years. (Elsa / International Skating Union via Getty Images)

All because he chooses difficulty over safety. Risk over reason. The mastery he craves exists on the other side of possible. Way past comfort. That’s why he was in Cali, some 2,600 miles from his Virginia home, in mid-December, dressed in all black, grinding away.

Three times he fell in this Tuesday afternoon session, not to mention a couple of other jumps he popped. His spills came on quadruple axels. He’d skate over to his coach, Rafael Arutyunyan, standing with his father, Roman Skorniakov, who also coaches him. Their conversations seemed to last but a minute or two, if that. Then Malinin would go land it. Again. And again.

“I told him why,” said Arutyunyan, who began coaching skaters in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1976. “There is what, and there is why. He understands the what. And I know why. … My job is easy, sure. But I had to learn for 50 years to know what to say.”

Malinin holds the honor as the only skater ever to land a quad axel in competition, first accomplishing the feat in 2022. His signature jump requires 4 1/2 rotations and a stubbornness worthy of supremacy. Crashing onto the ice helps Malinin perfect where his edge failed. Where his timing went awry.

The ice yields nothing for free. Malinin prefers paying.

“You learn more from losing than you do from winning,” Malinin said, arms folded as he slouched in the steel bleachers overlooking the ice, his black and gold Air Diamond Turf Nikes, retro Deion Sanders sneakers from 1996, propped on the seat in front of him.

“So a lot of the times, after I finish competition, I always look at the negatives, which a lot of people can say that’s like a bad mindset to have. But at the same time, that’s how you can improve more.”

This run of improvement Malinin’s on began by winning the men’s world junior championship in 2022, followed by winning every U.S. championship and Grand Prix Final — the culmination of figure skating’s annual top-circuit season — since. He dominated the 2024 and 2025 world championships. He has the three highest free skating scores ever, thanks largely to his addiction to quad jumps. The only thing missing from his resume is Olympic gold.

Because he hasn’t been there yet.

This week begins Malinin’s introduction to the greater sports audience, including those who tune in once a cycle. The U.S. championships are in St. Louis and will anoint those to represent America at the Winter Olympics. When the eyes of the world turn to Milan for the dazzling sport, he projects to be singularly brilliant. This cycle’s breakout star. The new face of figure skating.

The son of Russian-born figure skaters, a part of Malinin, freshly 21 years old, feels predestined. His athleticism captivates even the untrained eye, as if he were engineered to fly in skates.

He’s the first to land seven quadruple jumps in a single program, a feat he accomplished at the 2025 Grand Prix Final last month in Japan. In the 2024 Grand Prix Final, he became the first to land a quad in all six figure skating jumps — the salchow, axel, lutz, flip, loop and toe loop — in the same program. And in a display of his effervescent showmanship, Malinin just might pull out a backflip. Nothing flexes supremacy like a reverse somersault on one foot, landing on a blade as thick as a MacBook Air screen, being just a bonus element of a program.

But Malinin reached this precipice thanks largely to the part of him that most resembles legendary athletes.

In a sport of elegance and artistry, Malinin is a dawg. Colloquial slang in reverence to the most maniacal competitors. Those with the confidence and edge worthy of the highest stakes. Who embrace the possibility of failure in the pursuit of glory. That’s Malinin. It may be masked by his refinement, hidden behind his boyish Christmas-morning smile. But he burns with a fire familiar in GOATs.

Malinin’s crowd-pleasing theatrics include backflips during his routines, such as here during the world championships in Boston last March. (Tim Clayton / Corbis via Getty Images)

His talent is off the charts. But the beauty of figure skating blossoms from its brutality. Talent isn’t enough to dominate this sport. It commands fortitude. Malinin likes that part, too. As he wipes his blades on the welcome mat of greatness, the Quad God’s arrival might seem to be written in the stars. But his mentality earned this opportunity.

Choreography coach Shae-Lynn Bourne knew Malinin had a different edge when she started working with him five years ago. The first time they met at the rink, she noticed he had his skates on. Before she did.

“That already told me he’s ready to go,” said Bourne, a six-time ice dancing medalist at the world championships, including gold in 2003. “When we finish working for three hours, I’ll say, ‘Maybe we can do a little bit more today.’ And he’ll stay another three hours and not even take off his skates. He doesn’t question it. He doesn’t even make those little micro-expressions that let you know they really don’t want to, but they don’t want to say no.”

A decade ago, when expectations weighed heavier than his growing frame, competition scared him. Not the skating itself. Not the spinning or the jumping. But when it counted, when the time came for his quality to be measured, against other skaters, it shook Malinin. He’d stand at the boards literally trembling before stepping on the ice.

The greatest figure skater in the world. Formerly shook.

“But that’s the process of any athlete,” Malinin said. “They don’t start from getting on the ice their first day and being like, ‘OK, I’m as good as LeBron James, you know, on the ice.’ So it’s like, you’ve got to start somewhere.

“I’ll be honest,” he added. “If you asked me (my most impressive ability) even a year ago, I would have said it’s physical. But this year, mentally, I feel like a different person. Just that growth, that development — not only in skating itself, but just the mindset, just the energy, the presence I have on the ice. Everything has changed.”

Malinin with his father and coach, Roman Skorniakov, at this year’s Skate Canada event. A former Uzbekistani Olympian, Skorniakov moved to the U.S. in 1998. (Elsa / International Skating Union via Getty Images)

The jumps certainly power his mystique. A quadruple jump scintillates without requiring special knowledge. The height of the jump. The torque on the spin. The relief when it lands. But quads alone don’t explain his gravitational pull.

This Virginia kid oozes aura. It’s evident when he walks by, and the other kids stop lacing their skates. In the comfort he exudes when speaking about future glory.

Malinin doesn’t merely expect what’s coming to him, he looks forward to it. He wants it. The accolades. The attention. The responsibility of elevating figure skating. Freeing the sport from the ice box in which it lives.

He believes he should be hanging with Snoop Dogg, sitting courtside at NBA games and inspiring style trends with his fashion choices. Who else can pull off sequins and spandex or a Dodgers jersey with a bandana, depending on the day?

“We’ve got taste, too,” Malinin said, tilting his head for emphasis as he laughed. “That’s something that people can’t forget.”

The Milan-Cortina Games represent a resurrection of sorts for the Winter Olympics. The pandemic robbed the 2022 Games in Beijing of their luster. But the world returned to its new normal and, judging by the Summer Games in Paris, Olympic fervor experienced a revival.

This context provides an opening for a transcendent star, such as Malinin, whose excellence could thrust him into the limelight of mainstream and whose cultural fluidity makes him ready for it. He can hop online and play Valorant, recite Migos lyrics and pose for a fashion magazine in Louis Vuitton. He’s groomed for modern celebrity.

“He’s different,” said Arutyunyan, who moved to the United States in 2000 and coached American stars Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen and Nathan Chen. “He sees the world differently. I’m not talking his technical abilities. Nobody can do what he does. It’s obvious. Everybody can see it, right? But his personality is different. He’s fun. I like him. He’s a little crazy, too, which is good.”

Tatiana Malinina, representing Uzbekistan, finished eighth in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, the same Olympics where Tara Lipinski and Kwan took gold and silver, respectively. In November that year, Malinina moved to Dale City, Va. She and Skorniakov, her partner, had already moved to Russia after their rink in Uzbekistan closed. But friends who settled in America urged them to move across the Atlantic, where the training facilities were better and the opportunity for ice time aplenty.

“I like America very much,” Malinina said in a 2002 interview. “It was difficult to come to America, but easy to stay.”

In 2000, Malinina married Skorniakov, also a Russian native who opted to skate for Uzbekistan, the easier road to international competition. Malinina and Skorniakov funded their careers in part by teaching and coaching young skaters at SkateQuest skating club in Reston, Va.

In 2004, the couple had their first child. They named him Ilia.

“Nobody knew how to pronounce my dad’s last name,” Malinin said. “So that’s why we went with my mom’s last name.”

Combined, Malinina and Skorniakov have four Olympic appearances — including both making it in 2002, after the move to the U.S. — and 17 Uzbekistani national championships.

And they wanted to keep their son out of the sport.

Having sacrificed so much of their lives to the craft and industry of figure skating, they wanted something different for their son. They preferred he find his own passion instead of simply inheriting theirs. They certainly didn’t plot out the engineering of a world champ.

“Actually, we opposed it,” Malinina said in a November 2024 interview with the International Skating Union. “… We waited until he was already, like, 6 1/2 when he constantly asked us. Can he go on the ice? Can he go on the ice? And then finally we decide, OK, let’s do that just for fun. Just, like, learn how to skate.”

Malinin and his mother, Tatiana Malinina, in Tokyo during the World Team Trophy event in 2023. Malinina was also an Olympic figure skater. (Toru Hanai / International Skating Union via Getty Images)

The young Malinin skated by himself, uninterested in instruction. No pressure. No plan. Just the pure joy of motion and music. He started creating his own programs, picking his tunes and freelancing his moves. The first song choice? The journey to become Quad God began with the strums of “Dueling Banjos” from the soundtrack of the movie “Deliverance.”

“That was like just playing around and turning on the music, and started doing improvisation,” Malinin said. “I had no care in the world if I was going to go pro in this sport.”

He participated in other sports. Soccer. Gymnastics. A little playground hoops. Thinking back, he remembers his athleticism shining. He’d impress everyone with a backflip after a goal in soccer. Nail a half-court shot on the elementary school court and get a cheer from the other kids. He didn’t realize then his physical attributes were advanced. He just knew his limitations wouldn’t fly in football.

“I had no good hand-eye coordination,” he said. “That s——— was the worst.”

But he took to skating like a bee to a sunflower. Malinin kept doing more, getting better. For years, it was in the name of fun. Eventually, his parents surrendered to his passion for figure skating. They trembled right along with him.

“I remember some of the competition when he was younger,” his father said. “Like a juvenile, when he was 10, I remember that I would get really nervous. … I always remember (when he went) through his first double lutz. I remember I almost, like, passed out.”

Eventually, his parents became his coaches. Still to this day.

From his dad, who finished 19th in each of his two Winter Olympic appearances, Malinin absorbed calm and perspective. The perfect balance for a sport that jostles between exquisite and excruciating. His ability to handle all this now, the rising fame and the expectation to be the best, is because his dad taught him how to always find his center.

His mother bequeathed to him her fierceness. Her unapologetic relentlessness. She taught him the importance of courage and how once you’re brave, it becomes part of your character.

Malinin’s coach, Rafael Arutyunyan (right), has coached several American Olympic medalists, including Nathan Chen (left), who won gold in Beijing in 2022. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

“She’s tough, which I like a lot,” said Arutyunyan, who referred to Malinina as the boss. “So that’s how it should be. Love, it’s not about to be always nice. Why? He’s going to face true life. He should know what is white and what is black. And you want to be on top of the world, and you want to get easy life? How is that going to go?”

They didn’t rush him into the sport. They let him arrive on his own. But once he embraced the family business, a legacy that dates to his grandfather, they didn’t withhold from him. He wanted it all, because he loved figure skating.

That love manifested in his rapid progression. He landed his first quad jump at 13 years old.

“That was really impressive for the skating level,” Malinin said. “So I said, ‘OK, let’s maybe take this a little more seriously. And maybe I can learn a few more quads.’”

He no longer gets overwhelmed by the anxiety. His mother? A different story.

She doesn’t travel to his competitions for fear of transferring her angst to him.

“When he started doing this more professionally, I became more nervous,” she said. “And I feel like as soon as I get nervous, he feels that. So I try to kind of step back. So I support him, and I train him here (at) our rink, but I try to not travel. Because I feel like we have some strong connections, and as soon as I get nervous, he feels that.”

Malinin came to Irvine for Arutyunyan and Bourne. They both ply their trades as coaches at Great Park Ice, the practice facility of the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks. Arutyunyan serves as the head coach of the high-performance team with his own office. It’s the largest ice facility in California and is considered one of the premier venues in America. Four rinks — three built to the NHL’s standard and one Olympic-sized rink — with a restaurant and bar. Plus a snack bar, a few arcade games and plenty of space for kids to run around. It’s posh enough to lure Malinin across the country, off his usual schedule, for five days of training.

Arutyunyan doesn’t believe in comfort. He believes in truth, however uncomfortable. He doesn’t believe in 99 percent being good enough. He crushes participation trophies with his bare hands.

He started working with Malinin in 2021. Arutyunyan didn’t sell magic. He sells clarity. So he helped Malinin understand the value of working until his skill and strength matched his athleticism and drive.

Ilia Malinin in major events, since 2022

DateEventFinish

Jan. 2022

U.S. championships

Second

March 2022

World championships

Ninth

Dec. 2022

Grand Prix Final

Third

Jan. 2023

U.S. championships

First

March 2023

World championships

Third

Dec. 2023

Grand Prix Final

First

Jan. 2024

U.S. championships

First

March 2024

World championships

First

Dec. 2024

Grand Prix Final

First

Jan. 2025

U.S. championships

First

March 2025

World championships

First

Dec. 2025

Grand Prix Final

First

Once he harnessed all of his physical abilities, through the grind of training, Malinin reached unprecedented levels.

“You know what he has going for him?” Bourne said. “He doesn’t get in his own way in any way. A lot of people get drawn into the fear, distracted by the thoughts in their head. That makes them cautious. I don’t think he does that. I think he believes in himself. So he’s in the right headspace. He will never just coast in life.”

He didn’t make the team four years ago, when Chen took gold in Beijing. If Malinin becomes Olympic champ in Milan, American men will have won back-to-back golds for the first time since Scott Hamilton and Brian Boitano did it in 1984 and 1988.

Malinin stands as the prohibitive favorite. Because of his quad jumps — and he’s the only one to do them — the degree of difficulty pushes his score potential so high. It figures to take something monumental to keep him off the top of the podium.

But Malinin didn’t settle for being just a jumper. He developed his artistic side and honed his skating skills. That required connecting with the character inside and the story he wanted to tell. That’s where the music comes in. Bourne and Malinin curate their playlists all year, weighing options for his programs.

The short program — which caps at two minutes, 40 seconds — leans as much on precision and storytelling as jumps. Malinin tapped into his emotional depth with NF’s “Running” for his short program in the 2025 world championships. His version of vulnerability, letting the audience get to know him. When he broke the quad record in the 2025 Grand Prix Final, he played a compilation of songs and included a personal voiceover in a free skate program he called “A Voice.”

“You have to love the music you skate to so you can put out the energy in your performance,” Malinin said. “If you skate to music that you don’t really like, people will see that.”

Malinin’s energy heading into the Winter Olympics: Travis Scott.

Once a teenager bouncing to “Sicko Mode,” Malinin knows how to turn up.

Seeing the popular rapper perform live was on his to-do list. Now his wishes are loftier.

“I’m not going unless I’m performing with him,” Malinin said, playfully punctuating his visual with an empathic point at the ground.

Speaking it into existence. He knows what’s possible when you’re a sports star. And he’s the highest in the rink. Ready to deliver goosebumps. On the brink of becoming a figure skating icon. A national treasure.

Such clout waits for him. He just has to win.

Malinin invites this pressure. Prefers this pressure. Lives for this pressure.

“I wanna wear it,” he said. “I’m one of those people that, if someone says I can’t do it, I need to prove them wrong.”

Only the ice would dare utter such a taunt to the Quad God.