“I Always strive to be a game changer or innovator. The 19-year-old won his first world title in Montreal in March with a long program to music from the TV show “Succession.” It was immediately hailed as the greatest sporting performance in the history of the sport.
Marinen became the second man to land six quadruple jumps in a single event, and the first to do so with a quadruple half jump, a thrilling quadruple half jump he had never seen in competition before. Completed. Accompanied by clunky strings, dissonant piano chords and Nicholas Britell’s delightful 808, he skated with energy and rhythm, finishing with a record-breaking free skate score that beat his closest by more than 24 points to win the sport’s most important competition outside the Olympics.
The quad axel is the most difficult event in figure skating because the skater faces forward when taking off, requiring them to complete an extra half-turn. So dangerous that most skaters wouldn’t even attempt it, the jump was only successful eight times in competition, all by Malinin, who first performed it at the U.S. Classics at the age of 17. If there’s anything specific about genetics or training, but I would say it’s a mixture of my parents being skaters and the knowledge they gained throughout their careers,” Marinen said of his body and technique Said when achieving. “That’s all the effort, all the hard work and everything I put into this sport. It all comes together to make this possible.
Marinen, who with uncanny foresight christened himself @quadg0d on Instagram years ago, won the World Youth Championship just 23 months ago, has risen quickly to become a strong favorite for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. His emergence is also a welcome development in a sport beset by controversy, not least the doping case of Russian teenager Kamila Valiyeva that cast a pall over figure skating at the latest Winter Olympics .
But Marinen has made a career out of defying the impossible, and he’s far from satisfied. He believed it was only a matter of time before he could complete his quintuple jump, and that he would be the first to do it. What that means for a sport that critics say more than ever values athleticism over artistry is unclear, but that’s someone else’s problem. “What helps me motivate myself is constantly pushing my limits,” he said. “I want to make the sport more known and expand it to a different audience, not just skaters but sports fans. To make skating great and to show the limits, to show how much people put into the sport How much effort.
Malinin was born in a northern Virginia suburb to Russian-born skaters Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov. Malinin was six years old. He began skating at the SkateQuest rink in Reston, where his parents were coaches. Tatiana and Roman are acutely aware of the sport’s rigorous demands at the elite level and are wary of putting their sons on the path that each represented Uzbekistan at multiple Olympics. But a healthy taste for competition has allowed Marinen to excel in various divisional and regional events on the junior circuit.
“They were always at the rink, and if I wanted to skate, I would skate and practice, but if I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t,” he said. “But once I realized I had more potential, they started taking it more seriously. It was weird for me to have to start putting in more effort in practice. I was really tired at first and I Why do this? It’s a tough journey and you have to keep practicing.
A modest routine of waking up at 4.30am and training at 6am at Reston Training Center, an hour’s drive from their Woodbridge home, three days a week has developed. His parents’ wealth of knowledge, from technical expertise to life experience, became a valuable asset for Marinen growing up. The piece of advice that has helped him the most is to “have confidence in yourself and really trust muscle memory and the exercises and training you do.”
He describes the coaching dynamic in his early years as a perfect balance of “supportive” and “aggressive, trying to get the best out of me.” There is no clear line between coaching and parenting, which is exactly what Marinen likes. “I think it really helped me get closer to my parents and have a good relationship with them. At home, they were always saying: ‘This needs to be better’ or: ‘You need to work on this. ” But at the same time, even if I’m at the rink, we can always talk about what I want for dinner or something like that.
Marinen began taking skating more seriously when he unexpectedly qualified for the 2015 U.S. Junior National Championships at the age of nine, though he ended up falling short of the podium. “After that trip, I came home and I noticed a lot of improvement in many aspects of my performance: jumping, technique, etc.,” he said. “Both my parents and I came to the conclusion that there was something interesting about this development and maybe we should push harder and see what happens.”
Mali’s Won the U.S. National Youth Championship Shortly after his 11th birthday. During his free skate to the John Williams theme at JFK, he landed two double axels and four double jumps, including a double flip and double loop sequence. “That’s when I fully understood my capabilities and the limitations I could impose on the job,” he said.
In hindsight, the quick journey to the top was not always smooth sailing. After Marinen failed to qualify for the U.S. national team in 2018, he considered quitting and turning to soccer. “I was frustrated with myself,” he recalled. “Of course, my parents were a little frustrated that I didn’t make it. I almost said, ‘This isn’t going to work. I just want to stop.’ But after that I took some time to calm myself down and said, Well, things happen. You don’t always have the perfect skate or the perfect program. You just have to regroup and get ready for next season.
Marinen, who controversially missed out on qualifying for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics despite finishing second at U.S. Nationals (for which he was named an alternate), immediately raised eyebrows in his first season on the senior circuit. caused a sensation. But last season he raised the bar even further, successfully defending his Skate America and U.S. Nationals titles and winning his first Grand Prix final.
However, as the world championships approached, trouble was brewing behind the scenes. “Succession,” choreographed by Canadian ice dancer Shae-Lynn Bourne, the 2003 world champion, was less popular. After missing a week due to injury, he considered withdrawing from the game.
Although Marinen skated cleanly in the short program, the lack of a quadruple jump left him third in the free skate, behind Japanese rivals Shoma Uno and Yuma Kagiyama. Marinen knew he needed something special to overtake the leaders, so he pulled out all the stops and made the unthinkable look easy, displaying the effortless power, form and fearlessness that have become his calling cards . He finished the competition with a score of 227.79 in the free skate, nearly three points better than fellow American Nathan Chen’s all-time record. Notably, Marinen received positive execution scores in all six of his quadriceps.
One thing’s for sure – as long as Marinen continues to add point-grabbing elements to his repertoire that his opponents can’t match, he’s going to become increasingly difficult to top. At a press conference after finishing second in Montreal, Kagiyama, sitting next to Marinen, made a remarkable confession to more than 100 international reporters: “I don’t think I would be able to go if we all performed at 100 percent. win.
Marinen’s competitive goals are very simple. Successfully defend the world championship next year in Boston. Won gold medal in Italy. But when the conversation turns to his larger goals, like pushing the technical boundaries of figure skating, Marinen’s eyes light up. That includes potentially adding a quintuple axel when the rest of the world has yet to catch up to his quadruple axel.
“If you think about figure skating, 20 or 30 years ago people would have said three and a half weeks was impossible,” Marinen said. “But now people are starting to do four-and-a-half spins in the air very easily, and now that I’m the first to do four-and-a-half spins, it feels like a boundary at the moment. I really think I can win five or more .
Marinen is also eager to take on a bigger challenge: helping to restore figure skating’s popularity in the United States since the 1990s when Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya Harding, Michelle Figure skating’s popularity in the United States has plummeted since Michelle Kwan and Kristi Yamaguchi became household names and the Stars on Ice tour began. It’s not easy. Marinin said the biggest hurdles include the timing of the events, which typically occur at night in U.S. time zones. A more obvious obstacle for casual fans is the complicated scoring system. After replacing the old 6.0 system in 2004, the more complex ISU review system includes a three-person technical team and a nine-person review team, as well as various project components.
“For mainstream sports like basketball or even hockey, it’s easy for people to understand how to score,” Marinen said. “But even I’m not 100% sure how the scoring works. [in figure skating] At times, I’ve been skating for almost 12, 13 years.
Marinen attended George Mason University in Washington, D.C., and struggled to maintain a normal life despite his extraordinary pastimes. He deliberately did not move to a fully online education, as many young world-class athletes prefer, instead choosing to attend a local public high school in Falls Church, Virginia. “I do want to have social interaction and hang out with people who are more than just my skating friends,” he said. “I like playing video games. I like skateboarding, I like riding bikes, I like drawing, I like drawing. I like doing a lot of different things, and I always try to learn something in everything.
He said he was passionate about studying architecture and interior design. “But of course, things could change. I could change my major or have a different perspective, maybe get into computer technology or even create video games.
But before that, the four gods still have unfinished business. “Of course, I do have the goal of competing in the Olympics and trying to place in the Olympics or win more world championships,” he said. “But my main goal always is to skate as consistently and cleanly as I can.”
