Ilia Malinin Is Back | Defector

Chances are you—and certainly not I—did not need redemption at 21. At that age, I was in college, and my world mostly revolved around working at the student-run newspaper, getting “clips,” doing my best to line up another summer internship, hanging out with my friends, and also finding time to do all my classwork. When I did screw up, which of course I did because I was 21, invariably someone would tell me not to worry about it too much. I had the whole rest of my life ahead of me. My future stretched out before me like an endless road, and this was just the beginning.

But I was not an elite athlete in an Olympic sport. Every athlete’s time in the arena is short, for some even more so than others. For Olympians, the grandest stage comes just once every four years, always in a different country, never on your own terms. So, yes, at the age of 21, figure skating superstar Ilia Malinin—the self described “quad god” who failed to medal at the Olympics in the men’s individual event despite being the heavy favorite—was looking for redemption. He had one last shot at it on Saturday, at this year’s world championships in Prague.

In figure skating, like other solo sports, you compete against yourself. There is no other team or other athlete out there with you, hence the old wisdom that the game is much as mental as physical. Your own mind is as much the enemy as any other skater is, which is why Olympic figure skating history is littered with upsets. On any given day, Malinin has the physical ability to do seven quad jumps, including the hardest of them all, the quad axel. That is never in doubt. But could he mentally shake off what happened in Italy? That was the question every figure skating fan had.

Malinin answered, as he usually does, with quads.

OK, this time he only did five. It was still plenty to win gold, taking first by more than 22 points over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, a brilliant skater in his own right who has had the unfortunate luck of competing in the same era as Malinin and Nathan Chen. Perhaps more importantly, Malinin skated with ease. He looked lighter on the ice. The entire program unfolded as scripted. It feels almost too simplistic to say that, with the Olympic pressure gone, Malinin floated to first place, but he did.

When the scores were finally revealed, Malinin looked more relieved than overjoyed. “My expectation was to leave the long program in one piece,” he said afterward, “and I definitely think that happened.” The quad god will end this figure skating season on a good note, though not with the Olympic exclamation point he desired. (Both individual Olympic champions, Alysa Liu and Mikhail Shaidorov, sat out worlds this year.) He’s just 21; there’s no reason to think he won’t have the quads in another four years. But there’s still that infamous Olympic pressure. He has four years to figure it out.