American Ilia Malinin earns Olympic redemption with world figure skating gold
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American figure skater Ilia Malinin celebrates after winning gold at the world championships on March 28, a month after his disastrous eighth-place finish at the Winter Olympics.
PHOTO: REUTERS
PRAGUE – US figure skating star Ilia Malinin won a third straight men’s gold at the world championships on March 28, one month after his spectacular meltdown at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics.
He led all the way to take the title with a winning margin of 22.73 points over Japanese rival Yuma Kagiyama after the free skate, while Japan’s Shun Sato took bronze.
“It’s done. That’s it,” said an emotional Malinin after his performance in Prague.
“My expectation was to finish my free programme in one piece and that has definitely happened.”
The 21-year-old told reporters that he felt a lot of “relief” now the season had ended, especially on a positive note.
“I had a different mindset coming here,” he added. “All I wanted to do was escape from myself and enjoy every moment on the ice and have fun, and that is exactly what I did.”
The world championships in the Czech capital took place just a month after the Olympics where Malinin was the overwhelming favourite.
Undefeated for more than two years, the American led after the short programme but crumbled in the free skate to finish eighth.
Mikhail Shaidorov won the Olympic gold ahead of Kagiyama and Sato, who took silver and bronze respectively. The Kazakh skipped the world championships.
In his first competition since the Games, Malinin took a 9.44-point lead from the short programme into the free skate on March 28.
He was more cautious than at the Olympics and simplified the technical aspects of his routine, notably swopping his trademark quadruple axel for a triple axel.
Malinin also reduced the number of quadruple jumps from seven to five, nevertheless making an impressive comeback after the Olympic debacle, scoring 218.11 points for his free skate and 329.40 overall.
He became the first men’s skater to claim three world titles since fellow American Nathan Chen, who won in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
“I think this was probably one of the more easier world championships I’ve been to just because of the amount of pressure I had at the Olympics,” Malinin told reporters.
“And going here I felt like it was almost no pressure at all. I’ve completely blocked out all the expectations, all the pressure that people put on me. And I was really here just to skate for myself and enjoy every moment of the world championships.”
Kagiyama, 22, moved up from sixth after the short programme to win his fifth medal and fourth silver at the world championships with 306.67 points.
Sato, also 22, took a medal at the competition for the first time with 288.54 points, rising from fourth as France’s Adam Siao Him Fa dropped from second to fifth after falling during his routine.
The four-day competition concluded on March 28 with Olympic champions Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry claiming gold in the ice dance.
Cizeron clinched his sixth world title after five victories with his former partner Gabriella Papadakis between 2015 and 2022.
For Canadian-born Fournier Beaudry, it was a first world championship medal. AFP
