After Saturday’s free skate, Ilia Malinin lay on the ice, eyes closed and absorbed in the action. Quadruple jumps, including a quad axel, a quadruple jump no one had ever landed before – and even a backflip in his typically spectacular style.
The routine included a fall and a few other missteps, but it didn’t matter. American star Marinen, who turned 20 years old, easily defeated Japanese opponent Yuma Kajiyama in the Grand Prix final to win the men’s singles championship and complete his unbeaten record in 2024, further consolidating his status as a superstar.
Perhaps the only thing that doesn’t sit well with Marinen is that the Olympics are 14 months away instead of two.
Malinen has become a major force in men’s figure skating since the 2022 Beijing Olympics, and his victory on Saturday capped a perfect calendar year that included world championship gold and put him just shy of the 2026 Olympics. Became the clear number one in the sport in just over a year.
Malinen opened the event with a dazzling short program on Friday, leading world championships silver medalist Kagiyama behind Malinen by nearly 12 points. In Saturday’s free skate, Marinen unleashed a flurry of quads — axel, lutz, sarjo, outside toe loop, loop and somersault — as well as a delightful backflip near the end , won another Grand Slam title. He ended up with a total score of 292.12 points, beating Kagiyama’s 281.78 points. Japanese player Shun Sato finished third with 270.82 points.
“I had this idea and what I wanted to achieve here and I was able to blow it out of the park,” Marinen said on the court after the win.
The familiar voice of Ilia Malinin. 🇺🇸
After successfully defending his title, he stood on the podium #GP图 title. 🥇 pic.twitter.com/QkhbfrWP8f
— NBC Olympics and Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) December 7, 2024
The Grand Prix Final is the culmination of figure skating’s annual Grand Prix series and invites only the top six skaters or pairs skaters in each discipline. It is one of the most prestigious global championships in the sport after the Olympics and World Championships.
The win capped a great weekend in Grenoble, France, for Team USA, which earned them three titles. Earlier on Saturday, Amber Glenn won the women’s competition and Madison Chalk and Evan Bates – two-time defending world champions – won the ice dance competition for the second year in a row. Team USA also won a gold medal and two silver medals in the youth competition.
Marinen was born and raised in Virginia. His parents, Roman Skorniakov and Tatiana Malinina, are former Olympic figure skaters of Russian and Uzbek descent. They moved to the United States and lived in Vienna, Virginia, where Marinen learned to skate at the facility where his parents coached. He attended George Mason University.
If not for a decision in 2022 that would have kept Marinen from playing for Team USA at the Beijing Olympics, he might have become a household name to casual Olympic fans.
American Ilia Malinin, who turns 20 on Monday, has climbed to the top of men’s figure skating and enters 2025 as the sport’s deserved No. 1.
At that year’s U.S. Championships, a month before the Olympics, the 18-year-old Marinen surprisingly finished second behind Nathan Chen, making a strong case for selection to the national team. But the selection committee didn’t need to make a selection based solely on results, opting for experience and selecting former Olympians Vincent Chou and Jason Brown — third and fourth nationally — to join Chen in Beijing. , making Malinen the first backup.
That worked out well for Team USA — which won the team gold after Russian skater Kamila Valieva was disqualified and had her points deducted — but it meant Malinin had to wait for his Olympic debut.
Since then, he has soared to the top of the sport. After the Olympics, the U.S. team sent Marinen to participate in the 2022 World Championships, where he finished ninth. He then competed in the World Youth Championships and received a gold medal for his first major win.
Since then, he has competed full-time on the Senior Tour. In the 2022-23 season, he won gold at the U.S. Championships, bronze at the World Championships and Grand Prix finals, and successfully completed his first quadruple jump. Now, in 2024, he’s unbeatable – World Championships, Grand Prix Finals, U.S. Championships – all gold medals.
Before skyrocketing up the rankings, Marinen gained recognition for an unprecedented move. Until September 15, 2022, no figure skater had completed a full quadruple pirouette—four complete rotations in the air after a half-pivot, which is considered the hardest in the sport and is the most difficult to complete from the oriented Starts front and requires an extra half-rotation to complete.
That changed when Marinen released it at an event in Lake Placid, New York
history. Made.🤯
17-year-old Ilia Malinin 🇺🇸 became the first figure skater to land a quadruple jump in competition.
Full story ➡️ https://t.co/cIHBkGIZFH#figure skatingpic.twitter.com/jysyCrF0lr
— Olympics (@Olympics) September 15, 2022
He has since repeated the feat multiple times, earning the nickname “Quadg0d” on Instagram to commemorate the achievement. He said in interviews that he was considering trying a version of the quintuple jump.
It’s his signature move, but nowhere near his skill level. Marinen has had great success in her sport, including setting a world record in the free skate at this year’s World Championships. After the ban on backflips, which had been in place since 1977, was lifted earlier this year, he didn’t hesitate to perform a backflip during the October competition.
Can we talk about Ilia Malinin doing backflips quickly and casually on his show? 🫨 #SkateAmerica pic.twitter.com/vcafwJn2yZ
— NBC Olympics and Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) October 21, 2024
Marinen ended 2024 with seven wins in seven events. Since missing the Beijing Olympics and participating in the 2022 World Championships, he has not fallen out of the top three in any event. The next major event will be on his home turf – the 2025 World Championships in Boston from March 23-30.
There is still a year to go until the start of the Milan Olympics in February 2026, when another top contender such as Kagiyama or France’s Adam Siao Him Fa (a bronze medalist at last year’s World Championships who missed the Grand Prix final due to injury) will chase Marinen . But heading into 2025, the American will be the undisputed No. 1 in the sport.
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(Photo: Jurij Kodrun/International Skating Union, Getty Images)
