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Ilia Malinin claimed a third straight world figure skating championship on Saturday afternoon, completing a swift redemption a month after his shock Olympic collapse with a commanding free skate.
The 21-year-old American entered the final at Prague’s O2 Arena with a commanding lead after Thursday’s short program, where his personal-best 111.29 had put him more than nine points clear of the field. This time, there would be no unraveling.
Skating last, Malinin produced a free program of 218.11 to finish on 329.40 points, comfortably ahead of Japanese rivals Yumi Kagiyama (306.67) and Shun Sato (288.54).
For Malinin, it was a performance as much about composure as content. Known as the Quad God for his unprecedented jumping arsenal, he once again packed his program with difficulty, landing five quadruple jumps, including a quad toe-triple toe combination followed by a backflip late in the program, but it was the absence of the errors that defined his Olympic free skate that mattered most as he came in nearly 23 points ahead of the next best score.
“I definitely felt very pushed and loved from the crowd,” Malinin said afterwards. “Every single element I did, they were all behind me and I felt that the whole way through my program.”
A month ago in Milan, Malinin had arrived as the overwhelming favorite for gold, only to fall twice and tumble to eighth in one of the biggest upsets in Olympic figure skating history. In the aftermath, he admitted the pressure had consumed him, replaying mistakes “24/7” in the days that followed.
On Saturday, the tone was entirely different.
That mindset had been evident from the start of the week. In the short program, Malinin attacked his opening quad flip and quad lutz–triple toe combination with conviction, drawing a roaring response from the crowd and signaling that the Olympic disappointment had not lingered.
“My expectation was to leave the long program in one piece and I definitely think that happened,” Malinin quipped afterwards.
Behind him Kagiyama, the Olympic silver medalist, surpassed his personal-best free skate score to a selection from Puccini’s Turandot only to finish second again, while Sato’s crowd-pleasing program to Stravinsky’s Firebird repeated his Milano Cortina bronze. Canada’s Stephen Gogolev placed fourth (281.04) ahead of France’s Adam Siao Him Fa, who landed two quads but fell on a third and dropped out of the medals to fifth place (271.56).
Estonia’s Aleksandr Selevko (270.42), in bronze position after the short, slipped down to sixth. The Americans Andrew Torgashev and Jacob Sanchez placed 10th and 12th, respectively.
The absence of Olympic champion Mikhail Shaidorov, who like Alysa Liu skipped worlds, left the spotlight squarely on Malinin – and this time the flaxen-haired American met it without hesitation. The Virginia-born skater became the first man to win three straight world titles since former US star Nathan Chen, who did it in 2018, 2019 and 2021 after the 2020 competition was canceled due to the pandemic.
“It was really challenging and really hard,” Malinin said to the crowd afterwards. “But with you guys I was able to make it through.”
