Ilia Malinin: ‘I have a little more pressure on myself. I don’t think I’m really that far away from everyone’

Figure skating’s ‘quad god’ takes aim at a third straight US national title starting on Saturday, but for the first time as the incumbent world champion

No matter how you look at it, Ilia Malinin is already one of the most technically accomplished men’s figure skaters of all time. From his history-making quad axel, to his personal best scores – almost three points higher in the free skate than previous record holder Nathan Chen – when the 20-year-old reigning world champion heads to the US figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas, this week, there’s little doubt that he’ll collect yet a third straight national title on the road to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.

He’s skating to music by rapper NF and rock band Falling in Reverse, and fans won’t just see the American skater complete a now-expected array of quad jumps, and his signature Raspberry Twist, (a move taken from acrobatics), he’s also included a newly sanctioned backflip. It’s all part of an underlying ambition to, “Help the new, more modern generation of people come and see what skating is,” he said to me this week. Given the mind-blowing fact he’s been working on a quint (an eye watering five rotations in the air) as a “side-project”, if there’s one athlete that can bring a Biles-like level of fandom to a sport well past its heyday, it’s Malinin.