Ilia Malinin looks invincible to his top rival at figure skating worlds
BOSTON — Yuma Kagiyama was smiling when he said it, as if he were trying to lighten the meaning of his words and the implication they carried about the weight of the challenge for any figure skater trying to compete with Ilia Malinin.
After Thursday's short program at the World Championships, when he finished a close second to reigning world champion Ilia Malinin, Kagiyama was asked what impresses him most about the man known as Quadg0d.
'He does all those difficult jumps, and he makes them look effortless,' Japan's Kagiyama said through a translator. 'Maybe he is putting (out) 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.'
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Invincible.
There may have been a bit of jest in that word choice, but the serious truth is Malinin's unprecedented array of quadruple jumps alone is enough to make him nearly unbeatable, especially if he leads going into the free skate.
And that assessment of Malinin comes from a guy who won silver medals at the 2022 Olympics and three world championships, a guy whose edge work, posture and finesse have given Kagiyama a nonpareil elegance on the ice.
Yet it is easy to understand why Kagiyama feels that way. Even when Malinin makes mistakes on several jumps, as he did in this season's Grand Prix Final, he lost the free skate but not the title to Kagiyama.
'I had some goals coming into this competition, and of course, scores are important,' Kagiyama said. 'I wanted to just get my short and my free clean. So my top priority is not the scores, not the ranking. I just wanted to put everything I have out there.'
Kagiyama is halfway there, having done a flawless short program in which his exquisite balance on knife-edge blades saved a potential disaster on a quadruple jump.
Malinin was also flawless and so electric that a roaring TD Garden crowd stood to applaud early in his final element, a step sequence. The result was a new international personal best score of 110.41, topping his old mark by 3.16 and giving him a lead of 3.32 over Kagiyama going into Saturday's free skate (8 p.m. ET, NBC and Peacock).
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan was a distant third, nearly 16 points behind Malinin.
'I was not expecting them to cheer me on halfway through my step sequence, but it was definitely uplifting experience,' Malinin said.
His quads — a quad flip and a quad Lutz in combination with a triple toe loop — were impressive as always. His trademark raspberry twist was stunning for the way he never stopped moving after landing it.
But this was as complete a performance as Malinin has given, capped by his freezing without a wobble into an architectural final pose.
'I think it was definitely one of the best performances I've done,' Malinin said.
He felt more nervous than usual before beginning the 2-minute, 50-second program to music by the rapper NF. He didn't understand why the nerves kicked in but took a few seconds to step outside himself and think, 'OK, that's interesting.'
'Once the music started playing, and I got into my starting position, and I almost fell into that, you know, flow state, and it really just took me from there,' he said.
Malinin has been to places no one else in the sport has reached. He is the first to land a quadruple Axel, the first to try all six types of quad in a free skate, the first to try a total of seven quads in a free skate.
'What is most remarkable to me is I feel he has more in him,' said U.S. teammate Jason Brown. 'I have no idea what it feels like to do what he does, but it just looks so effortless. And so I feel like sky's the limit.'
Brown struggled in his short program, his first competition since early November, when he stopped to solve persistent issues with his boots. He made costly mistakes on two jumps and wound up 12th with 84.72 points.
The third U.S. man, Andrew Torgashev, made one misstep and was eighth at 87.27.
This time, it looks as if Torgashev rather than Brown will bear the onus of helping the U.S. get three men's singles spots at the 2026 Winter Games, for which the placement of the top two finishers must add up to 13 or less.
'Any time you have three guys on the team, you all want to carry your weight,' Brown said. 'We're always relying on each other.'
Malinin is likely to finish no lower than second, which would give Torgashev some wiggle room.
'People might expect a lot from me, and they expect me to come and win every single competition, to be really confident,' Malinin said. 'I think that sometimes I am still human. There are off days.'
Sometimes.
Philip Hersh is a special contributor to NBCSports.com. He has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics.
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