Ilia Malinin

Malinin began skating in 2010 under the tutelage of his parents, who were both Olympic skaters for Uzbekistan. He is the 2016 U.S. national juvenile champion, the 2017 U.S. national intermediate champion, and the 2019 U.S. national novice bronze medalist; he did not qualify for the 2018 U.S. Championships. Internationally on the advanced novice level, Malinin is the 2018 Asian Open Trophy champion and the 2018 Golden Bear silver medalist.[1]

Malinin made his junior international debut at the Philadelphia Summer International, winning gold ahead of U.S. teammate Nicholas Hsieh and Darian Kaptich of Australia. On the 2019–20 ISU Junior Grand Prix, he placed fourth at JGP United States and seventh at JGP Italy. Malinin was unable to compete at the 2020 U.S. Championships due to injury, but was awarded a berth to the 2020 World Junior Championships based on his early season results.[3] At the World Junior Championships, he was 13th in the short program and 18th in the free skating to finish 16th overall.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020–21 ISU Junior Grand Prix, where Malinin would have competed, was cancelled. He was instead invited to 2020 Skate America after the Grand Prix series was converted to semi-domestic events. Malinin placed a surprise fifth at Skate America after unveiling two new quadruple jumps – toe loop and Salchow – that he learned during lockdown.[5] As a result of his placement, he was invited to participate in the Las Vegas Invitational, where he helped Team Tara defeat Team Johnny.[6] Malinin was unable to compete at the 2021 U.S. Championships after missing the qualifying competition with an injury.

With the resumption of the Junior Grand Prix, Malinin returned to international competition at the first edition of the 2021 JGP France in Courchevel, winning the gold medal despite making errors on both of his attempted quadruple jumps in the free skate. He called it "a struggle since I haven’t competed in a year, but I think now that I’m back things are starting going back to normal."[7] At his second event, the 2021 JGP Austria in Linz, Malinin entered as one of the favourites for the gold medal, and won with new personal bests in all segments. He landed a quad Salchow successfully in the free skate, while making an error on his quad toe loop attempt. With two gold medals, he qualified to the Junior Grand Prix Final.[8] However, the Final would later be cancelled due to travel restrictions prompted by the Omicron variant.[9]

Returning to the senior level at the 2021 CS Cup of Austria in November, he placed thirteenth in the short program but rallied with a second-place free skate to take the bronze medal.[10]

Competing at the 2022 U.S. Championships with hopes of making the American Olympic team, Malinin placed third in the short program. Second in the free skate with four quadruple jumps landed, Malinin won the silver medal, a result he said surprised him: "I definitely wasn’t expecting to skate this good and especially place second."[11] Malinin's placement resulted that, per qualification criteria, the third berth on the Olympic team was to be decided between him and pewter medalist Jason Brown. Ultimately the committee chose the veteran Brown, a result that attracted some controversy.[12] Malinin was instead assigned to make his World Championship debut later in the year. Brown praised him, saying "U.S. figure skating is so lucky to have such a bright future with Ilia."[13]

In advance of the 2022 World Championships, Malinin was sent to the International Challenge Cup to secure the required technical minimum scores. He was successful in this, winning the gold medal in the process.[10] Competing at the World Championships in Montpellier, the men's field was considerably more open than usual due to the absences of Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu and the International Skating Union banning all Russian athletes due to their country's invasion of Ukraine.[14] Malinin finished fourth in the short program with a personal best of 100.16, exceeding his previous best international score by almost twenty points. He sat only 0.96 points behind third-place Kazuki Tomono.[15] In the free skate he made major errors on two quadruple jump attempts, both of which were downgraded, and dropped to ninth overall. He spoke afterward of there having been "more pressure on myself, just wanting to skate good so badly and it kind of didn't work out."[16]

Malinin finished the season at the 2022 World Junior Championships, which due to Bulgarian pandemic measures was delayed from early March to mid-April and relocated from Sofia to Tallinn.[17] He entered the event as the heavy favourite for the gold medal based on a strong season.[18] In the short program he skated cleanly and set a new junior world record of 88.99.[19] He won the free skate as well, setting junior world records for that segment and for total score, taking the gold medal by a margin of almost 42 points over silver medalist Mikhail Shaidorov.[20]

Malinin has set the junior world record scores three times under the current +5 / -5 GOE (Grade of Execution) system – once in each three categories.