Malinin is the only skater to land a quadruple axel in competition and could attempt up to seven quadruple jumps in his long program.
Malinin’s technical skills and artistry have made him a dominant force in figure skating, with an undefeated streak since November 2023.
Malinin won last year’s world championships by a whopping 24-point margin over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama.
BOSTON — It was a little after 10 p.m. on Tuesday night when Ilia Malinin finally took the ice for his designated practice session at TD Garden. The defending world champion drew the last slot of the 27 practice sessions that had been running at the arena since 6 a.m., but hundreds of fans stayed late to watch him anyways. They cheered after he ran through his short program even though he didn’t attempt any of his signature jumps.
‘I was a little bit surprised, yeah, seeing a crowd there,’ Malinin said afterwards.
As the 2025 world figure skating championships take place in Boston this week, it’s clear that Malinin is the main attraction. The 20-year-old from Reston, Virginia is not just the defending world champion, the only person in history to land a quadruple axel in competition, the self-proclaimed ‘Quad God.’ With the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina quickly approaching, he is arguably the face of his entire sport − and seemingly destined to be one of the headliners for Team USA.
Malinin knows his status in figure skating comes with some pressure. Competing at a world championships on home soil, as the defending champ, in a pre-Olympic year − all of that adds to it. But he said he welcomes the attention, and the opportunity to push the boundaries in his sport.
‘Of course I do really feel that pressure,’ Malinin said in a news conference last week. ‘Since (I’m) one of the bigger names in skating, (I know) that I have a bigger audience. And that a lot of people are looking to what I’m doing and the kind of things that I’m trying to do on the ice. So I really try to create new things on the ice, play around with styles and different things on the ice to really just make me stand out and just push the sport.’
Malinin adopted the ‘quadg0d’ moniker on Instagram more than four years ago, and he’s since blossomed into one of the most prolific jumpers in the history of figure skating. Not only is he the first man to land a quadruple axel − which, despite its name, actually features four-and-a-half rotations − but he is also the first to land six quads in the same program.
Malinin could actually attempt as many as seven quadruple jumps, including the famed quad axel, in his long program Saturday night. He is also the only man to even attempt that many. Malinin said he is going to wait until his warmup to decide whether to go for all seven or scale back his program.
‘It’s just so crazy,’ Mexican skater Donovan Carrillo said of Malinin’s jumping skills. ‘But I also feel he is pushing the sport to a different level. I’m very excited to see how the sport is going to evolve after Ilia Malinin.”
For Malinin, the goal is not just to execute jumps but introduce new elements and combinations to the sport. In addition to his history-making quads, he also added the recently-legalized backflip to his programs, as well as a dramatic aerial move that he’s dubbed the ‘raspberry twist.’ (‘Malin’ translates to raspberry in Russian.)
The combination of technical ability and artistry in his programs has vaulted him to the top of the sport. He has not lost a competition since November 2023, and he hasn’t missed a podium since the 2022 world championships, where he finished ninth.
‘I would consider myself to be my biggest rival,’ Malinin said. ‘For me, that’s my whole motto. I always like to compete against myself and to really just push my own limit. … It’s kind of just really a competition between myself that I like to set goals and slowly work my way up to them.’
Malinin, who is coached by his parents, won last year’s world championships by a whopping 24-point margin over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, who finished second and is also expected to be Malinin’s closest rival this week. Malinin also won the most recent national championships in January by 44 points. And he said he feels ‘like a whole different version of me’ since then.
‘I feel like I’ve worked on a lot of things, improved a lot of skating skills, technique, just everything,’ he said.
‘I think I have a different mental approach to this. I feel more confident, and I really have more confidence in the skills that I have developed.’
For Malinin, the performances are now becoming so dominant that the questions surrounding him are starting to grow, both in timeframe and scope. What music will he pick for his programs at the 2026 Olympics? How will he handle the pressure and media attention of an Olympic cycle? Is a quintuple jump, maybe at some point, in the cards?
Malinin’s fellow competitors and teammates have their own questions, too. Primarily: How? How does he do it? And how does he make it look so easy?
‘Even skaters cannot comprehend what he’s capable of doing. It is just remarkable to watch and witness,’ U.S. teammate Jason Brown said.
‘I think everyone’s jaw is on the floor – not just because of what he’s doing, which is already crazy hard, but the way that he makes it so effortless. And he keeps pushing his own boundaries. Every event, he’s topping himself. It’s incredible to watch, and he does it his own way.’
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @tomschad.bsky.social.