Throughout the most recent Winter Olympic Games, Ilia Malinin was repeatedly asked when he would land the first-ever quadruple axel in the Games’ long history.
The only person to ever land the fabled move in competition, the 21-year-old American had the pressure of the world on his shoulders with each skate, as fans, pundits, and even competitors waited to see if he would unleash his ultimate maneuver.
But it never came.
While he landed it flawlessly multiple times in practice and in warm-ups, Malinin never sprang the move in official competition. When he tried to go for it in his final competitive skate of the Olympics to clinch the men’s individual competition gold medal, Malinin hesitated.
The small hesitation forced him into a single spin, which would have been OK if he had skated clean the rest of the routine. But that small hesitation cascaded into a series of tumbles, misteps, and mistakes, which hurled Malinin down the leaderboard and off the podium.
While that would scar most athletes and force them inward, not wanting to take that kind of risk again, it’s only motivated the back-to-back world champion.
He isn’t only thinking about landing a quadruple axel. He’s thinking bigger. Malinin is confident he can land a move in competition that was once thought to be impossible: the quintuple jump.
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Before the Olympics, Malinin joked in a media appearance that he had landed a quintuple jump before, but off camera with his parents, who are also his coaches.
Following the Olympics, in a recent interview, Malinin was again asked about the never-before-seen jump that would take him from physics-bender to logic destroyer.
Malinin, casual as always, gave a confident answer.
“What quints can you already do?” the reporter inquired.
“We’ll leave that until the season is finished,” Malinin replied with a wink.
The wait for the end of the figure skating season won’t be long, as Malinin will try to defend his crown as world champion at the end of March in Prague at the World Championships.
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