Ilia Malinin breaks new ground with seven quad attempts to defend Grand Prix Final title
The reigning world champion remains undefeated this season as he continues to push the boundaries of men's singles skating.
Figure Skating
Ilia Malinin is not a vampire, but he certainly is a champion.
The USA figure skater showed near superhuman strength as he attempted seven quads in his free skate at the 2024 ISU Grand Prix Final on Saturday (7 December) to claim a second consecutive victory in the event with 292.12 points.
The music track – "I'm Not a Vampire" by Falling in Reverse – was a fitting choice for Malinin's gravity-defying program. Originally down to do four quadruple jumps, the defending champion upgraded another three triple jumps to quads to set a new milestone in men's figure skating.
"I think going into a Grand Prix Final, I wanted to challenge myself with my technical ability as well as try to incorporate the artistry that I've been working through the past few seasons to really perfect," Malinin said. "So I think it was kind of a challenge for me to want to come out here and try to put everything into one program and see how it goes."
While his ambitious undertaking did not come out exactly as planned – Malinin was marked down for quarter under-rotations on four jumps and full under-rotations on the other three, in addition to a fall on the quad Lutz – the spectators at the the Patinoire Polesud loved every minute of it. Posters marked "Quad God" and "Ilia is the King of the Ice" filled the arena and as Malinin finished the program with a crowd-pleasing backflip and fell to the ice in exhaustion, an uproar of cheers swept through the stands.
The free program score of 186.69 put Malinin second behind Japan's Kagiyama Yuma but a dominant lead of almost 12 points from the short program ultimately got him more than 10 points ahead of the double Olympic silver medallist, who ended on 281.78 points.
Another Japanese skater, Sato Shun, jumped up from fourth place to wrap up the podium with 270.82 points overall.
What looked like the entire USA figure skating skating team was in force to cheer on their teammate on Saturday.
With his victory, Malinin made it three out of four victories for USA in the singles events at the 2024 ISU Grand Prix Final and Junior Grand Prix Final to follow on Amber Glenn and Jacob Sanchez's earlier victories in the women's and junior men's events, respectively.
Junior women's champion Shimada Mao was the only non-USA singles winner in Grenoble, France.
The victory in Grenoble was the second consecutive title for Malinin who remains undefeated this season.
While Malinin's free skate score was well below the personal best of 227.79 that he set at the 2024 ISU World Figure Skating Championships, the skater, who turned 20 earlier this week, had no regrets about the scores and is already thinking about how further to improve the program.
"I was not really thinking about the technical panel. After my result, I was just really proud of myself for trying to get this technical layout and to just challenge myself to get through the program," Malinin said. "Right now it's just kind of a test program to see what I can improve on and bring more. But I think I'm overall pretty satisfied with my performance tonight."
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ISU Grand Prix Final 2024 – Men's final result
Free skating score in parentheses
- Ilia Malinin (USA) 292.12 (186.69)
- Kagiyama Yuma (JPN) 281.78 (188.29)
- Sato Shun (JPN) 270.82 (184.54)
- Daniel Grassl (ITA) 254.96 (173.20)
- Mikhail Shaidorov (KAZ) 253.75 (162.49)
- Kévin Aymoz (FRA) 238.63 (169.81)