Above: Ilia Malinin glides across the ice at Skate Canada International. Photo credit: Getty Images
By Darci Miller
By any measure, the things Ilia Malinin has done this season and over the last calendar year have been incredible.
After becoming the first figure skater to successfully land a quad Axel in competition and winning the 2024 World Championships, Malinin holds a year-long undefeated streak with wins at Skate America and Skate Canada International and has scored north of 300 points twice this fall.
But if you ask him how things have gone, Malinin answers as though it’s all been just another day at the office.
“Overall, this season has gone pretty well for me,” Malinin said. “I’m pretty satisfied with all of my achievements and accomplishments that I’ve done. And of course, it was just the beginning of the season, so now is my time to take in all the info that I got and work on improving things little by little leading up to the Grand Prix Final.”
Indeed, Malinin led off the season with the first two Grand Prixs back-to-back in October. It’s not something skaters will often choose, but the unconventional move worked for this unconventional skater.
“I kind of liked it, just kind of getting through both of them at once,” Malinin said. “It felt pretty good to me, so I think that might be something I look into for the future.
“The advantage is that you can take time to prepare for both of those in the beginning so you can skate your best, and then wouldn’t have to worry about trying to compete at a later competition to really set up my spot. That way, I get whatever result I get and then I’ll be able to have more time to prepare.”
In typical Ilia Malinin fashion, he got some pretty good results. At Skate America, he won with a total of 290.12 points, and at Skate Canada, his total of 301.82 dusted the rest of the field by 40.66 points.
Malinin is the first man to win both Skate America and Skate Canada in 25 years, and it was his third consecutive Skate America title.
“Both of the Grand Prixs weren’t so perfect, but I know there’s always kind of that room to work,” Malinin said. “And going through both of those Grand Prixs gave me time to kind of see what things I can change or improve to make things more comfortable and more consistent, and to just kind of clean up different areas and polish certain areas as well.”
The two golden finishes secured him an early berth at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final this week in Grenoble, France, giving him the chance to defend his 2023 title.
It’ll be the first time Malinin has to defend a major international title. He won the 2022 World Junior Championship and moved up to the senior level the following season, and his first senior World title defense will be in March.
While he’s not nervous just yet, he admits there will be some pressure to defend his title, but he’s faced that all season as the reigning World champion.
“I think sometimes I definitely feel a little pressure,” Malinin said. “Now that I’m a World champion, it does put a lot of pressure at some events. But I think I’ve been able to kind of control that and figure out how to manage that.”
It’s a steep learning curve for any skater, but Malinin said that nothing changed for him coming into this season.
“I would say my main accomplishment that I wanted to do [this season] was to experiment with different ideas or make it a little more challenging for me to get up there,” he said. “But in a way, just kind of pretty usual, I would say. Just try to skate my best.”
Part of the experimentation has been adding a backflip into his free skate. It’s the first season the move has been allowed in competition since 1976, and Malinin, who learned how to flip in gymnastics as a kid, is one of the first of the new generation of skaters to compete with it.
“I think it’s a pretty interesting topic, and I feel like it pushes the sport to make it a lot more entertaining and creative to people,” Malinin said. “It gives it that, not really scary effect, but it shows the difficulty of skating. Because I think it’s something people can relate to, especially learning or seeing someone do it off the ice — they can see how hard it is, but then for someone to go out and put it on the ice, especially at the end of the program, is something that gives off that physical aspect of the skating.”
Since wrapping up Skate Canada more than a month ago, Malinin has spent time focusing on dialing in his programs before competing them once more in Grenoble.
But this revolutionary skater, who, at 19, has already pioneered the quad Axel, the backflip and his signature raspberry twist, will surely continue pushing the boundaries of skating even further.
“I think I need some time to think about that aspect,” Malinin said of his next new moves. “But I think, in the future, there will be some new things going on. We’ll just have to kind of figure that out.”
Malinin will be looking to earn his second consecutive Grand Prix Final title this week. For a full schedule, results and more, visit the Grand Prix Final Competition Central.
