MILAN — Ilia Malinin ambles past figure skating’s sequined angst with the cocksure bravado of a high school quarterback. His tousled blond hair, cut just long enough, waves like straw in the wind. He doesn’t smile as much as he smirks.
The world’s best male skater even has his own letter jacket: black with white leather sleeves and the abbreviation “4A” stitched across the back, code for skating’s most terrifying jump, the quadruple axel, which only he has landed in competition. Years ago, as a teenager, he made an Instagram account with jaw-dropping clips of all his quadruple jumps and combinations of quadruple jumps and gave it the name “quadg0d,” substituting a zero for the “o,” partially because it was available and largely because he liked the aesthetic.
