American ‘Quad God’ has Olympics fans guessing about a risky move

MILAN (AP) — Ilia Malinin continues to tease fans at the Milan Cortina Olympics by submitting program plans that will see the American figure skater attempt the quad axel, a 4 1/2-revolution jump so difficult that no one but him has ever entered competition.

Yet through two programs in the gold medal-winning team event and his individual short program Tuesday eveningthe ‘Quad God’ has yet to attempt the hardest quadruple jump of them all, opting instead for the safer triple axel that everyone else does.

“The lazy part of me,” Malinin said, grinning, “I just forgot to change the planned elements.”

Or maybe Malinin is saving it for his grand finale.

He has a five-point lead over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama and Frenchman Adam Siao Him Fa going into the free skate, a margin so large it almost seems insurmountable, and a lead that gives him some leeway if he tries and fails the quad axel.

The plan submitted by Malinin for Friday evening includes – of course – part of what would be a record seven quads in total.

“I hope I feel well enough to do it,” Malinin said more seriously. “But of course I always prioritize health and safety. So I really want to put myself in the right mindset so that I really feel confident going into it”

Planned program content is just that: a plan. Skaters often deviate from it depending on how they feel.

It may be that they had difficulty with an element in the practice and had to change it. Or maybe they make a mistake in the middle of their routine—for example, messing up the first jump on a combination pass—and are forced to change their program on the fly.

What makes the quad axel so difficult is that the axel is the only one of figure skating’s six primary jumps that starts facing forward, giving it an extra half revolution. In fact, the jump is so difficult that even elite skaters struggle with the triple version of it.

“I never thought I’d see someone do a quadruple axel,” he admitted in 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton. “Not in my lifetime.”

In fact, most people thought this was impossible.

Then Malinin proved it to be so.

In September 2022, off the radar at the US International Figure Skating Classic, he stunned the sport by executing a near-perfect version of the quad axel as part of his winning free skate. Malinin was only 17 at the time.

How does he do it? By spinning at about 340 revolutions per minute, or about as fast as a ceiling fan on high.

“It’s been mind-boggling to see what Ilia has done over the last three years,” said 1994 Olympic champion Kristi Yamaguchi. “I know some of us – Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton – we’ve talked and said, ‘We never thought we’d be alive to see a quad axel perform and land in a competition,’ and here comes Ilia, just shrugging it off like it was nothing.”

It’s definitely something. While the triple axis has a base value of 8.0 points, the quad has a base value of 12.5. Add to that the extra points Malinin was able to earn for the level of execution and the quad axel gives him a huge scoring advantage.

At last year’s world championships in Boston, he won it along with each of the other five quad jumps, taking him to his second straight title with the second-largest margin of victory in its 130-year history.

So why would he ever take it out? Besides the inherent risk, the rest of Malinin’s programs are so difficult that he doesn’t really need them. Kagiyama has only four quads planned for his free skate Friday night. This also applies to Siao Him Fa.

“I want him to be a smart competitor,” said Boitano, the 1988 Olympic champion. “I know how much it can mean to a skater to perform clean in the Olympics, and I really want him to perform clean. Yes, technical – as technical as he wants to be. But if one of the quads he wants to hit, he’s not feeling great that day, I want him to be solid.”

The son of Olympic skaters Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov loves nothing more to raise the baralthough.

Malinin was one of the first to incorporate a backflip into his choreography when the ban was lifted last year by the International Skating Union, for example, and the one he threw in Sunday’s team competition. left tennis legend Novak Djokovic in awe.

Malinin has even created his own signature jump, a leaping, spinning fan favorite known as the “raspberry twist.” He called it that because ‘malina’, from which his surname is derived, literally means ‘raspberry’ in Russian.

“When I was younger,” he explained, “I loved performing, whether it was turning on some random music at home and just starting to skate a program that I could improvise to and try to do triples even though I could barely do doubles. I was really passionate about the performing aspect of skating, and that’s what helps me feel that energy and pressure and almost use it to my advantage.”

However, Malinin admitted that he felt a different level of pressure in the team event at the Olympics. Both of his performances were mediocre by his lofty standards. But he felt much more comfortable during his short program Tuesday night, and it reflected on the ice, where his score of 108.16 was less than a point shy of his world leader this season.

Now Malinin has one more chance to perform during the Olympic Games in Milan Cortina on Friday evening.

One last chance to throw the quad-axel as well.