Ilia Malinin

What is undeniable about American figure skater Ilia Malinin is that he has achieved athletic feats in his sport that many thought impossible. He was the first and, as of 2026, the only athlete to land a quadruple axel—the hardest jump in skating—in competition (2022). He also was the first skater—and again, as of 2026, the only one—to land seven quadruple jumps cleanly in competition (2025).

It was against that backdrop that he entered the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games as the prohibitive favorite to win gold in the men’s singles event. But in what may have been the single most shocking outcome of the games, Malinin delivered an error-laden free program that left him in eighth place.

From Lutzboy to Quadg0d

Malinin was born in Fairfax, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C. It’s fair to say that skating is in his blood: His Russian-born parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, were Olympic figure skaters, representing Uzbekistan. But they worried about the pressure of competitive skating, and so, even as they trained other skaters, they didn’t push their son. “We thought maybe we want him to experience [a] different life than we had,” Malinina said in a 2024 interview.

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Still, young Malinin spent time at the suburban Virginia skating rink where his parents coached, skating to music he liked in what he considered a hobby. By the time he turned 10, he was enjoying it so much that he was competing for the Washington Figure Skating Club. When it came time for Malinin to pick a handle for playing video games online and social media, he says he chose Lutzboy as a nod to his mother, who was famous for her triple lutz. Soon, however, her son would be noticed for more than his lutz.

By 2016, at age 11, he had won gold in the boys’ competition of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Despite a disappointing 16th-place finish in his first World Junior Figure Skating Championships in 2020, Malinin had his eye on a spot on the 2022 U.S. Olympic team even though he was still competing at the junior level. That changed several months later when he landed a quadruple toe loop and a quadruple salchow in his first competition as a senior skater. After the competition he changed his handle from Lutzboy to Quadg0d.

A medal and a disappointment

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In 2022, at age 17 and competing in his first U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Malinin took a surprising silver medal, and his dream of being selected for the Olympic team seemed within reach. But American Olympic officials decided to send three veteran skaters to the Beijing Winter Games, leaving the teenager at home. Malinin admitted to being disappointed—in himself—acknowledging that he was left off the team because he had skated poorly in an earlier event. He said later that the omission motivated him: “Not going really pushed me…to really push my own physical and mental limits,” he told Washingtonian magazine in 2025.

By September 2022 Malinin was showing off what those limits might be, becoming the first skater to land a quadruple axel in competition. To complete the feat, Malinin takes off skating forward, springs into the air to a height of two and a half feet, and, spinning like a top, completes four revolutions before landing and skating backward. Total elapsed time: less than one second.

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Taking on the world

In 2023 Malinin won his first U.S. Figure Skating Championship and took a medal in the World Figure Skating Championships for the first time, placing third. But if there were any doubts about his athletic and artistic abilities on the ice, he put those to rest during the 2024 World Figure Skating Championships in Canada. He entered the final skate in third place, but after completing the four-minute program, which featured six quadruple jumps performed to the haunting theme from Succession, Malinin collapsed to the ice, covering his face. For his performance, the judges awarded him the highest score in figure skating history.

Malinin repeated as world champion in 2025, winning the title by an astounding 31 points and making him the prohibitive favorite to win gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan. As in 2024, he fell to the ice. This time, despite the victory, it was not in joy. Malinin had wanted to land seven quadruple jumps in his routine but missed a quad lutz, landing only (yes, we’re joking here, reader) six quads. For Malinin, however, there was no joke. “It wasn’t the skate I would’ve liked,” he told reporters after his performance.

Off the ice

Training six days a week for five or six hours a day, Malinin does not spend much time off the ice. He enjoys skateboarding and cycling but rarely does them for fear of getting injured. He attends college part-time at George Mason University, not far from his childhood home. He is happy to live at home and have a driver’s license.

He is, in some ways, remarkably typical of his generation. He loves music and works closely with his choreographer to create programs that remind him of the early days at the rink where his parents coached, when he would play songs he wanted to skate to on the loudspeakers. When Malinin performs, TV commentators sometimes note that he appears to be singing along to the music. During one of his exhibition routines, he sports jeans and a hoodie while skating to “Hope” by the rapper NF.

Malinin has largely handled the pressures of fame well, with one notable exception. In 2023, when asked about his sexual orientation, he replied, “I gotta say I’m not straight—that way, my components are gonna go up.” The comment suggested that LGBTQ skaters receive higher scores for the artistry in their performances. Malinin quickly took to social media to apologize. In a 2025 interview, he reflected on the comment: “I wouldn’t say I was young, because I was 18 when I said it, but I would consider myself immature.…It was time for me to grow up.”

Just before the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships in March, Malinin skated in a benefit event memorializing the 67 people, including 28 from the skating community, who died when a plane and helicopter collided over the Potomac River that January. “All of our daily lives, every time we step on the ice, we’ll always think of them. Every time we’re competing, they’ll always be in our hearts,” he said at the event.

In December 2025, Malinin entered the finals of the Grand Prix, a major pre-Olympic international competition, in an unusual position: After a miscue in his short program, he found himself in third place. In what commentator and former figure skater Mark Hanretty called “a brain-bamboozling” performance, Malinin landed seven quadruple jumps to take the title and further secure his position as a prohibitive favorite entering the 2026 Olympics.

Olympics and beyond

Even before his Grand Prix win and subsequent win at the U.S. Nationals in January 2026, expectations for Malinin’s 2026 Olympics could not have been higher. As figure skater and skating commentator Johnny Weir predicted, “It will be a Simone Biles kind of storybook, in the way he has revolutionized our sport. Everyone thinks he can win gold.” In the end Malinin’s 2026 games were more reminiscent of Biles’ tortured 2021 games than her triumph in 2024.

Malinin’s first Olympics began with him helping the United States win gold in the team event, although his individual score in the short program segment of that competition was outdone by his chief rival, Japanese skater Yuma Kagiyama. The two skaters faced off again several days later during the first part of the men’s singles competition. This time Malinin took first place in the short program, and Kagiyama finished second. After Kagiyama had a shaky free skate, the stage seemed set for Malinin to deliver quad-filled perfection; but the 21-year-old failed on his quad axel attempt early in the program and as stunned skating fans watched in the arena, he stumbled through the rest of his program, falling twice.

Malinin’s performance dropped him from first to eighth, with the Olympic gold medal going to Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan. Kagiyama won silver; Japan’s Shun Sato won bronze.

In the aftermath of the disastrous performance, Malinin displayed exceptional sportsmanship in seeking out Shaidorov to congratulate him. In the days after his performance, he seemed to accept the disappointment as learning experience, telling The Washington Post, “I came out a different person [with] a different perspective, different mindset,” adding “It’s just the beginning of more to come, and it’s just figure skating.”

Before the Olympic disaster Malinin had his sights set on more than gold. He was working on landing a quintuple jump, telling Northern Virginia magazine in 2024 that it was a goal “within the next few years.” Further, Malinin has noted that he wants to transcend his sport and achieve the highest magnitude of celebrity, citing as examples Lionel Messi and Dwayne Johnson: “I want to be on that level.”

But if he is to achieve that Olympic gold, it will need to be in France at the 2030 Winter Olympics.

He had a redemptive performance at the 2026 World Championships, skating nearly flawlessly and winning the title for the third consecutive year.