He was the first figure skater to land the quadruple Axel — 4½ rotations of the sport’s most challenging jump. He was the first to perform the full repertoire of six different quad jumps in the same program. So what more can the “Quad God” do?
“I think now that I have done the quad Axel they want to see something more, bigger and better,” said Ilia Malinin, who treats the ice as a mere launching pad from which to explore the ozone.
Unless he invents a new jump as Ulrich Salchow, Axel Paulsen, and Alois Lutz did more than a century ago, there may not be any more barriers for him to break.
For the 20-year-old Malinin, who’ll be defending his men’s title at next week’s World Championships at TD Garden, the four-minute format practically limits how many takeoffs and landings he can execute in a long program and still fit in the requisite spins and footwork.
But Malinin, who declared a couple of years ago that he wanted to be “an innovator and a game-changer,” still is testing the boundaries. “I just never give up,” he said this winter. “And I try to find ways to achieve everything, no matter what happens.”
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Malinin, a Virginia native whose parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, competed for Uzbekistan in the Olympics and double as his coaches, is the latest US male who’s been redefining his sport.
Dick Button, the first performer to land a triple jump, literally rose above skating’s tracing tedium. Scott Hamilton blended athleticism and artistry as none had before him. And Nathan Chen landed every quad but the Axel.
“We’re just coming off Nathan, who was phenomenal,” said Hamilton, who considers Malinin a “twice-in-a-millennium talent.” “And here we are four years later with someone who’s rewriting the record books and taking what’s possible to the next level.”
Possessing the essentials undeniably has helped Malinin along the way. “He had good coaches from the beginning of his career, an ideal physique for rotating, and the drive to make what used to seem like dreams to us skaters a reality,” NBC analyst Johnny Weir, a three-time national champion and two-time Olympian, said via email.
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Figure skating, of course, is a competitive endeavor, and one’s legacy is measured in titles and trophies.
Button won two Olympic gold medals and five world crowns. Hamilton collected a Games gold and four global titles. Chen, a three-time world champion, capped his career with gold in Beijing three winters ago.
Malinin, who’s only in his fourth senior season, hasn’t had time to collect nearly as much silverware, but his primacy is undeniable.
Nobody has beaten him since December 2022, when Malinin placed third at the Grand Prix Final in Turin. That streak includes three US titles, a pair of Grand Prix laurels, and last year’s world crown.
Malinin went into that championship with a quads-or-bust attitude. “I know that this could be the best skate of my life or it could go horribly wrong,” he said before landing half a dozen quads and beating Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama by 24 points.
If Malinin retains his title in Boston he’ll be the clear favorite to win next year’s Games in Milan. The Olympics is when the planet is tuned in and where preeminence is determined.
“I always thought an Olympic gold medal was worth more than five world championships,” said Hamilton. “The Olympics are huge.”
Malinin, who finished second to Chen at the 2022 Nationals, was good enough to make the team for Beijing.
Yet he was bypassed by the selectors who chose Vincent Zhou and Jason Brown based on their body of work over two seasons. Malinin, just up from the junior ranks, was dispatched to the World Championships for some international seasoning.
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He went kersplat in France, butchering two quads in the free skate. “I just wanted to skate good so badly, and it kind of didn’t work out,” said Malinin, who ended up ninth.
When Chen retired and returned to Yale to finish up his studies, Malinin was his obvious successor atop the domestic podium. Zhou wanted his picture taken with “the future men’s US champion.” “What I can say is, he is beyond out of this world,” Brown said.
Malinin claimed the next three US titles, each time by a greater margin. In January, he outpointed runner-up Andrew Torgashev by more than 46 points, deeming it “a pretty good performance.”
None of his countrymen can match his technical chops, neither in quality nor quantity. “I don’t even think of it as a competition anymore because that’s not something I can achieve,” Jimmy Ma, who represents the Skating Club of Boston, said after finishing nearly 100 points behind Malinin.
The lofty numbers produced by Malinin’s high-octane programs made the math nearly impossible for his rivals to surmount. The base values for his free skate, which include seven quads, are more than 110 points. Nobody else had more than 80.
“Who has the capacity to put a program together effortlessly that can match his point total?” wondered Hamilton, who competed under a scoring system that had a 6.0 ceiling. “Even if someone comes along and knocks on Ilia’s door he can throw a second quad Axel in the midsection of the program and say, ‘OK, what are you going to do now?‘ ”
Malinin’s meter runs at a dizzying pace — his first four free-skate elements and seven of the first eight are quads, three of them in combination with triples.
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“I have to keep my reputation up because I can’t be the ‘Quad God’ without any quads,” he said four years ago when he first began resisting gravity for real.
Malinin was only 17 when he pulled off the Axel, which no other competitor has managed, and which put him in the Guinness Book of World Records. It also upped the ante for everyone else.
“I never thought I’d see one in my lifetime,” said Hamilton, who calls it “a threshold advancement.” “His is perfect and easy. When you do a quad Axel like that, everyone in the world all at once understands that it’s possible. So you’ll be seeing a lot more.”
Yet even though Malinin has mastered it, the jump bedevils him. “We have a big love-hate relationship with each other,” he said. “Some days it really works out for me and some days it’s, ‘Oh my God, I have to go for this.’ ”
What Malinin did by conquering the most daunting of jumps is to propel himself into uncharted territory. “It’s a little bit scary in that I have to push myself and see where I can take the sport,” he said. “Where a few years ago I’d be following in all these other skaters’ footsteps.”
The simultaneous challenge is for Malinin to craft a complete package to prove that he’s more than a gifted levitator. “I want people to see my artistry and know that I’m not just some guy who’s jumping,” he said.
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Still, Malinin is determined to do it his way, as he declared on Instagram early this year: “Figure skating is an art. Don’t tell someone how to paint their painting.”
“I was feeling really Shakespeare at that moment,” he said. “Skating is an art and everyone has their own way of doing it.”
Malinin has been working with choreographer Shae-Lynn Bourne, the former Canadian ice dancer and three-time Olympian who collaborated with Chen and fellow Games gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu.
“I think I’ve found a style in a way that represents me on the ice,” Malinin said. “It’s a mix of modern and contemporary movements as well as some dramatic and theatrical.”
His short program is skated to “Running” by NF. “The short is more meaningful to me,” Malinin said. “It’s the song that I’ve been listening to over three years now on repeat. I wanted to see how I can fit my own emotions into that piece.”
His free skate is the revamped version of “I’m Not a Vampire” by Falling in Reverse. “The free is a scary pick because I’ve heard a lot about the music and the artist,” Malinin said. “I feel like myself when I’m skating that program.”
“For goodness sakes/Where is my self-control?” is an apt lyric for a skater who is perpetually tempted to unleash himself.
“Ilia once told me he was shy about picking music he actually liked to skate to for fear that people wouldn’t like it,” Weir said. “But now with his titles and fanfare he can do anything he wants to with abandon. It’s a show every time he takes the ice.”
Malinin’s “raspberry twist,” an enhanced butterfly move, is a play on his last name, derived from the Russian word (malina) for the fruit.
And once the backflip, banned for nearly half a century, was allowed, Malinin quickly added it to his free skate, landing it on one foot. “Tricks, trying to defy gravity,” he said. “Create a new entertainment for people watching the sport.”
So what’s his next aerial achievement? A quint? “Why not?” mused Hamilton. “I think it’s within his reach. You’ll probably see it in a year.”
At this point milestones are what Malinin sets for himself. “I still feel I am not the best I can be,” he said. “I have miles ahead.”
John Powers can be reached at john.powers@globe.com.