BOSTON — Ilia Malinin landed a record-tying six quadruple jumps in his free skate, taking a repeat world title to cap an undefeated season.
Malinin totaled 318.56 points between Thursday's short program and his "I'm Not a Vampire" free skate Saturday, running his win streak to nine events dating to December 2023.
He won comfortably by 31.09 over Mikhail Shaidorov, a 20-year-old from Kazakhstan who had four quads in a personal best free skate. It's the second-largest margin of victory in men's history under a 21-year-old scoring system.
Japan's Yuma Kagiyama, who was 3.32 points behind Malinin after the short, dropped to bronze after several jumping errors in his free skate.
FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Results
Americans Jason Brown and Andrew Torgashev placed eighth and 22nd, respectively. The U.S. qualified the maximum three men's quota spots for the 2026 Olympics.
If the U.S. earns a third pairs' spot at a last-chance qualifier in September, it will send a full team of three entries in all four Olympic figure skating disciplines for the first time since 1984.
The U.S. won three of the four events at figure skating worlds for the first time in history: Malinin in men's singles, Alysa Liu in women's singles and Madison Chock and Evan Bates in ice dance.
Malinin capped it by landing all six types of quads on Saturday night: quad flip, quad Axel, quad Lutz and quad loop, plus a quad toe loop and quad Salchow, each in combination. His only significant error was doubling a Lutz.
"That was really a fight for me," he said.
The 20-year-old nicknamed "quadgod" attempted a record seven four-revolution jumps at his last two events — December's Grand Prix Final and January's U.S. Championships — but fell on one each time.
Malinin will go into next season bidding to become the second American men's singles skater to win gold in his Olympic debut. The other was the late Dick Button, who won in 1948 and 1952.
What's more, every American man who won the world title the year before the Olympics went on to win Olympic gold the following year: Button (1951), Hayes Alan Jenkins (1955), David Jenkins (1959), Scott Hamilton (1983), Evan Lysacek (2009) and Nathan Chen (2021).
Malinin is the son of Uzbek skaters who moved to Virginia after competing at the 1998 Olympics.
In January 2022, he finished second in his senior U.S. Championships debut at 17, but wasn't chosen for the three-man Beijing Olympic team due to his inexperience. Malinin landed four quads in his free skate at those nationals.
“He is certainly the future of U.S. figure skating,” Chen said that day, adding that Malinin was “miles ahead” of where Chen was at that age.
Chen stepped away from competition after winning the 2022 Olympics. Malinin not only filled the void, but also took jumping up a level from Chen's previously unprecedented heights.
He opened the 2022-23 season by becoming the first skater to land a quad Axel in competition. He has achieved several more firsts in the two and a half years since, and more may be coming in the Olympic season.
This figure skating season concludes with World Team Trophy from April 17-19, live on Peacock.
