Unstoppable Malinin repeats as world champion with six quadruple jumps | Figure skating

He’s been called the Quad God, skating’s great innovator, the next Olympic champion. On Saturday night, in front of a roaring crowd at TD Garden, Ilia Malinin made it official: he is once again the best figure skater in the world.

The 20-year-old American conjured another sensational free skate to close out the world figure skating championships, landing a record-tying six quadruple jumps in strolling to his second straight world title. His season-best total score of 318.56 landed him a yawning 31.09 points clear of Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov, who captured silver with a personal-best routine, and Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, who dropped from second place to the bronze after an error-strewn long program.

Malinin’s triumph capped a historic weekend for the United States, who won three of the four gold medals on offer for the first time ever at a figure skating worlds. He joined newly crowned women’s champion Alysa Liu and ice dance winners Madison Chock and Evan Bates atop the podium – a dominant showing that sends a clear message heading into next year’s Winter Olympics in Milan.

Skating last to I’m Not a Vampire by the American post-metalcore band Falling in Reverse, Malinin opened with a quadruple flip before landing the mythical quad Axel – the four-and-a-half-revolution jump that has proven beyond the reach of the sport’s most ambitious talents. From there, he added a quad loop, quad Lutz, quad toe and quad Salchow, the latter two in combination. Only a popped Lutz midway through the program kept him from attempting all seven quads.

The quad Axel been landed only 15 times in competition after Saturday, all of them by the northern Virginia native, since he first pulled it off at the US Classic two years ago when he was 17.

Malinin punctuated the programs with a seemingly effortless backflip – he and fourth-place finisher Adam Siao Him Fa of France became the first skaters to land the recently legalized move at a world championships in nearly 50 years – before striking his finishing pose to a standing ovation from another sellout crowd at the home of the NHL’s Boston Bruins.

“I just fought for every element and I’m happy that I got this,” Malinin said.

The performance extended Malinin’s win streak to nine consecutive events dating back to December 2023. His margin of victory was the second-largest in men’s history under the modern scoring system, trailing only Nathan Chen’s 47.63-point blowout in 2018. Barring injury, it’s difficult to envision a timeline where Malinin won’t be the overwhelming favorite for Olympic gold 10 months from now in Milan.

Of the six quads Malinin landed on Saturday, none made him happier than the loop – a jump that had given him fits all season. “I feel very relieved that I was able to put out that performance the way I tried,” he said. “It wasn’t what I planned to and of course there’s a few minor things that I can keep improving but overall I feel pretty confident and I’m really happy for landing the quad loop finally this season.”

Malinin, the son of former Olympians from Uzbekistan who relocated to Virginia, was controversially left off the US Olympic team in 2022 despite finishing second at nationals. Since landing the first quad Axel in competition later that year, he has redefined the technical ceiling of the sport – and continues to raise it.

Behind him, Shaidorov delivered a personal-best free skate with four clean quads, including a triple Axel-Euler-quad Salchow combination, to his Moonlight Sonata-Take On Me mashup to earn Kazakhstan’s first world medal in any figure skating discipline. The 20-year-old from Almaty, who also won Four Continents in February, surged past Kagiyama after the Japanese star struggled to stay upright through his jumps.

“If someone had asked me at the beginning of the season that I would be on the world podium, I never would have believed it,” Shaidorov said. “The season was difficult but at the same time it was a breakthrough, and I’m just crazily happy to be on a world podium with such great skaters as Ilia and Yuma, and now I just want to keep moving forward.”

Kagiyama, the reigning Olympic silver medalist and three-time world silver medalist, entered the free skate just 3.32 points behind Malinin. But falls on his Salchow and a step-out on the triple Axel during his Flamenco routine to Ameksa and Romanza derailed any shot at gold. His score of 278.19 was enough for bronze, his fourth major international medal.

France’s Kevin Aymoz (272.52) and world championship debutant Shun Sato of Japan (270.56) came in fifth and sixth, respectively. Among the other Americans, Jason Brown delivered a clean, expressive program that earned him eighth place and a standing ovation. Andrew Torgashev finished 22nd after a difficult free skate, but together they ensured Team USA will send the maximum three men to the 2026 Olympics.

For all the excitement surrounding Saturday’s final segment of the championships, a current of grief ran beneath the competition all week. On Wednesday night, TD Garden paused for a 20-minute tribute to the 28 members of the skating community who died in January’s plane crash near Washington DC. Many of the victims – young skaters, coaches, and parents – were returning from a national development camp. Among them were several who trained at Malinin’s home rink in Virginia.

“They’re always in my heart,” he said earlier this week. “I wanted to skate for them. I hope I made them proud.”

Earlier Saturday, Madison Chock and Evan Bates became the first ice dancers to win three consecutive world championships in nearly three decades, holding off longtime Canadian frenemies Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier. Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson took the bronze, becoming the first Britons to win a medal at worlds in any discipline since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won the last of their four consecutive ice dance titles in 1984.