U.S. Figure Skating Championships 2024: Ilia Malinin takes huge lead after short program, breaking Nathan Chen's record 

Ilia Malinin came in as the reigning winner at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, and he showed he has no plans of giving up the top spot in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday (26 January).

The 19-year-old rising star won the Grand Prix Final just last month, landing a quadruple Axel in the short program for the very first time. Malinin landed two quads on Friday - but only went for a (dazzling) triple on the Axel - for a giant score of 108.57.

His strong-as-can-be short program gave him a 18.85 cushion over second-place finisher Maxim Naumov, who registered a 89.72 to just edge out last year's silver medallist Jason Brown, who scored 89.02.

Malinin's lead is the largest margin ever after the short program in U.S. nationals history.

Naumov, who took fourth at last year’s nationals, came out with a strong skate in the short landing a quad Salchow to hit his best-ever score.

Brown, the 2015 U.S. champion and two-time Olympian, was back on competitive ice after foregoing the Grand Prix Series for a second straight year. But the 29-year-old fell on his opening triple Axel before righting his ship with a triple filp and triple Lutz-triple toe in combination.

The men's competition will conclude with the free program on Sunday (28 January). U.S. Figure Skating officials will select teams for March's World Championships in Montreal following this competition.

The U.S. men are allotted three spots for the coming Worlds.

"After that performance, I was just relieved and very excited I was able to get through it knowing that the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of boot malfunctions, a couple of boot problems," explained Malinin. "So it’s really great that I was able to go out there and really get focused into that zone and pull out everything and stay on my feet."

Andrew Torgashev (88.02) and Camden Pulkinen (87.90) rounded out the top five.