Ilia Malinin didn’t call himself the favorite for gold in men’s figure skating after his short program routine Tuesday night.
“I mean, being the favorite is one thing,” Malinin said after opening a commanding lead over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama in the short program. “Actually getting it done and doing it under pressure and having the skate of your life to earn that medal is another thing.”
Malinin, some 30 minutes earlier, had put together a near-flawless short program.
The 21-year-old known as the Quad God lived up to the nickname on two of his three jumps, executing a quad flip and a quad lutz. He cartwheeled. He backflipped over the Olympic logo at center ice. He mean-mugged for the camera. His coach, Rafael Arutyunyan, held up the number one to the camera while waiting for the score to come in.
It ended up as a 108.16, more than five points ahead of Kagiyama’s 103.07 and more than 10 points higher than the disappointing 98.00 Malinin scored in the short program at the team event, which was behind Kagiyama.
That result required Malinin to depart from the plan and do the free skate for Team USA, which ultimately edged out the Japanese for gold on the back of his performance.
And it has everything to do with how Malinin, who can secure individual gold Friday night in the free skate, pulled Tuesday night’s skate out of his bag.
“I think I want to call it Olympic pressure,” Malinin said. “That’s what I want to say. Going out there that first time, hitting that Olympic ice and feeling the atmosphere, it was like, I didn’t expect it to be so much
“I mentioned it earlier in the week, it took me a little while to understand what really happened. But now that I understand it, I took a different approach today and really just [took] things nice and calm, nice and slow. Just relax. Really just push the autopilot button. Let it cruise.”
Compared to his first skate of these Olympics, and even his free skate in the team program — in which Malinin stumbled, but still easily placed first — there was an added confidence here. He owned the place from warmups, when he shadowboxed the camera and drew a crowd pop comparable to the Italian skaters who have home-ice advantage.
“I definitely think it was a good idea to do [both events in] the team, because I think the short program in the team event itself would not have been enough to get comfortable with the ice,” Malinin said. “I feel like since I was able to have that opportunity and I can make that choice, I think it makes sense to try both programs on Olympic ice, just to see how it feels. Now I can come with a different approach.”
He’s still building up for the free skate on Friday, the portion of the competition in which he is considered a class ahead of the field. If Malinin does what everyone expects, he’ll become the third American man to win individual figure skating gold this century, joining Nathan Chen (2022) and Evan Lysacek (2010).
The only thing Malinin didn’t do Tuesday was the quad axel, the hardest jump in the sport and one that only he has ever completed in competition. He settled for a triple instead, leaving the possibility of the quad open for Friday.
“I’m hoping that I’ll feel good enough to do it that day,” he said. “But of course I always want to prioritize health and safety. So I really want to put myself in the right mindset where I’ll feel really confident to go into it and not have that as something that I’m gonna risk.”
