Ilia Malinin has dominated figure skating for years. All that's left is an Olympic gold.
- - Ilia Malinin has dominated figure skating for years. All that's left is an Olympic gold.
Rohan NadkarniJanuary 14, 2026 at 6:02 PM
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Ilia Malinin was the first figure skater to land a quadruple axel in international competition. (Leila Register / NBC News; Getty Images)
Ilia Malinin, a 21-year-old from Fairfax, Virginia, has won virtually every major figure skating competition over the past three years. As he approaches the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, set to begin next month, the question in the figure skating community isn’t whether he will win gold — but how much will he win by.
Malinin has finished first in the last four U.S. championships, the last three Grand Prix Finals and the last two world championships. The only accolade missing from his increasingly long résumé is an Olympic gold medal.
So does he feel pressure knowing he’s expected not only to win in Italy, but win decisively?
“Of course, there’s going to be a lot of pressure,” Malinin told NBC News, “especially because it’s my first Olympics, and it’s going to be just something that I’ll have to look into. But I’m just really excited, and I’m not really thinking about it right now. I like to take things one step at a time, so most of the time, I’m just going through every single competition slowly. Once I get to the Olympics, that’s when I’ll feel the environment.”
It’s likelier that the environment will feel Malinin.
At the U.S. championships in St. Louis this month, he finished in first place by 57.26 points. At the Grand Prix final in December, he won by 29.88 points. And at the world championships last season, he cleared second by 31.09 points.
The gaudy scores have become the norm for Malinin, and the start of his Michael Jordan-esque run largely coincides with when he was left off the Winter Olympics roster for the 2022 Beijing Games. At the 2022 U.S. championships, Malinin finished second, signaling that he was talented enough to make the team. But he was bypassed for Beijing based on his overall body of work, which lacked wins on the senior circuit as he had competed mostly as a junior before the event.
“Honestly, going into those nationals — and that was where the Olympics were decided —I didn’t think I was going to be selected. But after I skated that program and having just so much hope from people that I would be going, it was kind of disappointing not being able to go,” Malinin says.
He says the snub ultimately motivated him.
“In the end, I think if it wasn’t for me not going to those Olympics, then I don’t think I’d still be skating even after Milan. I think that I’d just be done after Milan. But not going to those Olympics gave me a new hope, especially for Milan and for the future to come.”
Malinin has finished no lower than third in his last 11 major events, including eight straight first-place finishes. The key to his dominance? Jumping, or more specifically, the quad jump.
Months after Beijing, when he was only 17 years old, Malinin became the first figure skater to land a quadruple axel in international competition, landing the 4½-rotation leap at the U.S. Classic in September 2022.
Said 2018 Olympian skater Adam Rippon at the time: “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do on the ice.”
Malinin has since dubbed himself the “Quad God” because of his ability to land such jumps. In the 2024 Grand Prix final, he became the first skater to land a quad in all six figure skating jumps. At the 2025 iteration of the event in December, Malinin became the first to land seven quadruple jumps in one program.
“I named myself that because I landed one quad jump, and then I just changed my username [on social media] to Quad God,” Malinin says. “I didn’t think about it much, and everyone was telling me: ‘Why did you change your name? You only landed one quad jump.’ And from that moment, I kind of thought, ‘What if I do become the Quad God?’ From there, that’s when that whole thing started of me trying to land every single quad jump.”
Malinin’s aerial feats are so difficult that they help him rack up points in competitions. They are also a testament to his unique ability.
“He’s doing things athletically that nobody in this sport has ever come close to,” said NBC Sports contributor Philip Hersh, who has covered 12 Winter Olympic Games. “Basically, for the last year or so, he’s been only competing against himself in the record books.”
Ilia Malinin at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in St Louis on Thursday. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
Malinin’s dominance at times has left even his competitors in awe.
“He does all those difficult jumps, and he makes them look effortless,” Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, who will compete in Milan, said after the worlds in March 2025. “Maybe he is putting effort, but to us, it looks effortless and really easy. And it’s not just his jumps. I feel like his skating and his artistry, his expression, is getting better year by year, so I’m starting to think he’s invincible.”
Though Malinin is constantly raising the bar, he doesn’t expect to break out any new tricks in Milan. He is supremely confident in his current programs.
“If everything goes well, I think that will already bring new history or new records on its own,” he said. “I don’t want to try anything really new, because that’s obviously going to be a huge risk, especially for the Olympics.”
What Malinin does want to do, in addition to win, is help bring more attention back to figure skating.
“What’s most important for me is to show the world — if they’re skating fans or non-skating fans — how much I find a passion for my sport and how much I love skating and performing,” he said about what he wants people to take away from his performances. “A lot of the time, our sport is little under-looked-on, but it’s slowly starting to grow again. I think I’m part of the reason, but a lot of other skaters are also part of the reason. In general, what I want to do is bring back those high glory days of figure skating.”
Source: “AOL Sports”
