With eyes on the Olympics, Ilia Malinin rolls to fourth consecutive U.S. Championships title
Gold for Malinin, but Torgashev, Naumov shine on crucial night
With his four wins in-a-row, Malinin joins the aforementioned Chen – but also Brian Boitano and Scott Hamilton – in the history books, and hopes to do so even further come next month for the Olympic Games.
He opened his “A Voice” free skate with a patented quadruple flip and then triple Axel, but then from there geared down from his usual sports-car on ice ways, hitting a triple Lutz and triple loop.
It all was with Milan in mind, which Malinin said he’s “saving my energy for.”
“It was really easy for me to not to put too much energy” into this program, Malinin said, drawing laughter from the press corps.
The effort was sky-high from Naumov and Torgashev, however, as the two made strong cases to the U.S. selection committee for their respective Olympic spots.
It was Torgashev who had the skate of the night, his “Oratores” medley drawing the biggest roar and first standing ovation from the Enterprise Center crowd.
“This is the best night of sleep I’m going to have in St. Louis,” Torgashev said, also drawing laughs before getting more serious. “Today was great. It was everything that I was training; everything came together. Throughout the Grand Prix, I wasn’t showing my best.”
He added: “I accepted a little while ago that regardless of if I can call myself an Olympian or not one day, I think that the Olympic spirit is within all of us. This resilience, this drive, this tenacity that brings us all coming back to the rink every single day.”
Naumov had tugged at the heartstrings of the audience two nights prior in the short program, a chilling ode to his late parents. While he had to fight to stay up on several of his jumping passes, he performed full out – and ended his “In This Shirt” free skate with two spell-binding spins, the audience again rising to its feet.
“My intention was not to leave anything behind,” he told reporters. “That’s the mentality I’ve had ever since I was a kid. That’s exactly what got me through [tonight]: The resilience and the grit. I feel the strongest after these kinds of performances. That’s the most important to me.”
The overnight wait for Jason Brown, however, will be a challenge. He fell on his opening triple Axel and then never recovered from there, coming unravelled and placing 12th in the free skate segment.
“That’s a brutal one,” he said. “[But] I’ve been so proud of the body of work that I put out. Yes, this was a tough event… we’ll see how the selection goes.”
