What makes ‘Quad God’ Ilia Malinin so good at landing the hardest jumps in figure skating?
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US skater Ilia Malinin is no stranger to making history on the ice. The 21-year-old, originally from Virginia, punctuated his gold-medal-winning free skate Sunday night with a backflip in one go — also known as the “Bonaly flip,” named after French figure skater Surya Bonaly, who was the first to flip at the 1998 Nagano Games. when it was still banned.
On Sunday, Malinin became the first figure skater to do so officially deliver at the Olympics – for the love of the game, as it did not earn him technical points.
But a skating instructorolotionary is best known for being the first person to land one of the hardest jumps in figure skating – the quadruple axel – at a competition in 2022. He was only 17 at the time.
The move is the only basic jump that has forward takeoff, and involves four and a half rotations in the air.
His quad jump prowess has earned him the moniker “Quad God,” which he has embraced wholeheartedly by making it a part of his social media handles.
“How good is Ilia Malinin in the quads? It’s simple. Talent is the first thing,” sports writer Pj Kwong wrote in an email to CBC News.
“He’s a natural athlete,” said Kwong, who is also a figure skating coach. “We will need to consider the legacy of the skaters who came before him who paved the way and threw down the gauntlet to encourage him to face the impossible.”
A Canadian Olympian weighs in
That includes Kurt Browning of Canada, the famous skier who made history by becoming the first person to successfully land a quad jump in competition in 1988. (Quad jumps are a broad category that includes the quadruple axel.) Browning said the axel is known as the “king of jumps.”
“The main reason why skaters believe that is because it’s the end of the jump that starts the front,Browning told CBC News.
Most jumps in figure skating come from the back of the skate, Browning said. That’s because the toe pick – or the small, saw-like ridge on the front of the skate – makes it more difficult to move forward.
“If you jump forward and you want to go back, you have to find an extra … transition piece to make that happen,” Browning added.
He said most skaters “don’t like” going forward, but Malinin “obviously does.”
That makes Malinin’s secret weapon “twofold,” Browning said. He has a spring in his jump that allows him to go straight up. This allows him to stay in the air long enough to get a spin.
“He doesn’t have one superpower. He has two or three, and his mental strength allows him to put on this quad axel.”
A family of Olympians
It may also help that Malinin has two former Olympians as parents and coaches.
Malinin’s parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, are both former Olympic swimmers, having competed for Uzbekistan, according to CBS News.
American Ilia Malinin scored 98.00 to finish second in the men’s short program of the Olympic figure skating team event. That was good enough to keep the Americans on top overall.
But despite his toughness, Malinin told The Associated Press that at the end of the day, skiers are people, too.
“I would not tell people that I am untouchable. I want the opposite. I want people to connect with me,” said Malinin.
“Yeah, I do all these crazy things on the ice that don’t fit physics in some way. I still want them to see that all of us skaters are human.”
