Ilia Malinin rebounded from an eighth-place Olympic finish to post the world’s highest short program score in four years at the World Championships in his first competitive skate since the Milan Cortina Games.
Malinin, bidding to three-peat as world champion, landed a quadruple flip, triple Axel and quad Lutz-triple toe loop combination, finishing with a relieved smile and earning a personal best 111.29 points.
The Virginia native leads by 9.44 points — the largest men’s short program margin at worlds since 2019 — over Adam Siao Him Fa of France going into Saturday’s free skate in Prague, Czechia (live on Peacock).
“I was definitely coming back to prove myself that (the Olympics) was (a) one-time thing, but now I realize this is much more than just skating,” Malinin said, according to the International Skating Union (ISU). “It’s being able to go and enjoy and have fun. Coming here I had no big expectations.”
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Malinin won 14 competitions in a row from December 2023 through the Prevagen U.S. Championships this past January. Then in his Olympic debut in February, he led after the short program before a 15th-place free skate dropped him to eighth.
Malinin said he thought about the Olympics “24/7″ after coming home — mainly “the good points” — but tells himself that what happened is in the past.
“I thought of so many different things that I could have done differently to get a different outcome, but in the end, it’s with this outcome; this is what happened,” he said. “Maybe in a different universe I would have won the Olympics and maybe decided to not do world championships, but here I am, so now I can appreciate and enjoy the sport of figure skating.”
Malinin emphasized getting back up to keep going. He said not much has changed about him since the Games.
“Another version of me and another part of me kind of appeared out of nowhere (after the Olympics), and that’s just the person of not trying to put so much expectation on me and really just wanting to enjoy what I do and what I love,” he said.
Aleksandr Selevko of Estonia, who was 16th at the Olympics, is in third place, seeking his country’s first world medal.
Yuma Kagiyama of Japan, the silver medalist at the last two Olympics, is in sixth place after slipping and falling on the takeoff of a planned triple Axel.
“So many skaters jumped in that area, so there was a small glitch on the ice, and unfortunately, because for the Axel I needed to take out from the edge, my skate hit the glitch, and it was in a different direction that I was going to rotate,” Kagiyama said, according to the ISU.
Olympic gold medalist Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan did not enter worlds. It is common for Olympic medalists to skip the post-Olympic worlds due to off-ice opportunities.
Americans Andrew Torgashev and Jacob Sanchez are in seventh and 10th place, respectively, after personal best short program scores.
The top two Americans’ results must add up to no more than 13 to keep the maximum three men’s singles spots for the 2027 Worlds.
Torgashev, the two-time U.S. silver medalist, placed 21st and 22nd in previous worlds appearances, then was 12th at the Olympics.
He said he was panicked the last two weeks, considered withdrawing and that getting himself going again after the Olympics was the hardest thing he’s ever done.
“Hours of complaining of I don’t want to do this,” he said. “I got myself here, and I’m like, my legs are not the same as what I remember from Olympics. Everything feels harder to do. I’m tired. Six minutes (warm-up before the short program), I was shaky on. Before I went out for the program, I was like, I don’t know about this. I really don’t know what’s about to happen. I just tried to trust myself and rely on the bulk of training I have. Competing at Olympics was a great experience of how to deal with that big pressure. So I was just able to trick myself into thinking I was relaxed.”
Sanchez, fourth at nationals, made his senior worlds debut at age 18 on five days’ notice.
While on a snowboarding trip last Saturday, he learned that he was replacing two-time Olympian Jason Brown, his childhood skating inspiration who withdrew.
“I was just about to go down the mountain, and I got the call,” said Sanchez, who was fourth at junior worlds three weeks ago. “It was just such a moment, and I had the best (snowboarding) run of my life after that, and I kept going. I showed up to practice the next day, and here I am now.”
Worlds continue later Thursday with the pairs’ free skate, live on Peacock.
Amber Glenn could win her first World Figure Skating Championships medal on Friday, live on Peacock.
