Ilia Malinin won a second straight world title, but he wanted more

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Ilia Malinin won a second straight world title, but he wanted more

BOSTON — Ilia Malinin won a second straight world title Saturday night, this one by a larger margin than the first.

But, despite his utter dominance of men’s singles skating, Malinin felt upset that he had left something undone.

That’s why he whacked the ice in frustration after finishing a free skate that left him happy because it brought another gold medal but disappointed because he fell short of his goal.

This season, Malinin wanted to further enhance his reputation as the Quadg0d by doing an unprecedented free skate in which all seven jumping passes began with a successful quad, and they were to include all six different types of the jump.

The skating gods apparently still think that is hubris.

He now has tried it unsuccessfully three times.

“It’s a pretty decent challenge that I’ve given myself,” he said.

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Ilia Malinin looks invincible to his top rival at figure skating worlds

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Ilia Malinin looks invincible to his top rival at figure skating worlds

BOSTON - Yuma Kagiyama was smiling when he said it, as if he were trying to lighten the meaning of his words and the implication they carried about the weight of the challenge for any figure skater trying to compete with Ilia Malinin.

After Thursday’s short program at the World Championships, when he finished a close second to reigning world champion Malinin, Kagiyama was asked what impresses him most about the man known as Quadg0d.

“He does all those difficult jumps, and he makes them look effortless,” Japan’s Kagiyama said through a translator. “Maybe he is putting (out) effort, but to us, it looks effortless and really easy.

“And it’s not just his jumps. I feel like his skating and his artistry, his expression is getting better year by year, so I’m starting to think he’s invincible.”

Invincible.

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Ilia Malinin takes figure skating to new heights while winning world title

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Ilia Malinin takes figure skating to new heights while winning world title

MONTREAL — Let the skating apotheosis of Ilia Malinin begin.

And why not? In four minutes Saturday night, the 19-year-old Virginian took his sport to athletic heights it had never seen before and took himself from third after the short program to the top of the awards podium at the world championships.

His free skate got the highest score in history. He landed an unprecedented six clean quadruple jumps, including his trademark quad Axel and two quads that opened combinations well into the second half of his program.

The crowd stood and roared when he landed his final jumping pass with about 20 seconds to go. The noise got louder and louder until it ended.

“It was amazing to hear the crowd go wild,” Malinin said.

When he finished, Malinin grabbed his head in his hands, as overwhelmed by what he had done as everyone who saw it at the Bell Centre was. He then collapsed in joy onto his back.

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Numbers show regressive impact of Russian ban in skating. Is the decline good or bad?

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Numbers show regressive impact of Russian ban in skating. Is the decline good or bad?

So here we are, hard upon a second straight figure skating Grand Prix Final without Russian entrants as justifiable punishment for their country’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, still waiting on a decision in the soap operatic Kamila Valieva doping case almost two years after the Russian phenom tested positive six weeks before the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The Valieva decision, which has delayed awarding the 2022 team event medals, is expected by mid-February.  That presumably is mid-February 2024, but who knows?  Anyway, it can go on the back burner for today’s discussion, which is about the state of the sport without the beleaguered Valieva and her compatriots as the Grand Prix Final begins Thursday in Beijing.

There is no doubt that the absence of the Russian women, who had utterly dominated the sport since 2014, has had a dramatic effect on jumping.

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Living in two worlds at once, Camden Pulkinen seeks first U.S. Championships medal

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Living in two worlds at once, Camden Pulkinen seeks first U.S. Championships medal

ore difficult since last August.

“About tenfold more difficult,” he said.

For the previous six years, when he lived and trained in Colorado Springs, Pulkinen had a five-minute drive to a rink where the elite figure skaters had almost unlimited ice time. He had finished high school online and then had taken in-person and online college courses at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs essentially on his own schedule. .

When I spoke to him early last week, that life seemed a distant memory. Now he is up at the crack of dawn to get from Columbia University’s Manhattan campus to the Chelsea Piers Sky Rink, where he begins his daily training between 8 and 8:30, and the ice time available to him ends at 11:20. That trip involves 14 stops on the 7th Avenue subway and then a mile-long walk to the rink, and it takes between 50 and 55 minutes.

When his training ends, Pulkinen does the trip in reverse to begin his day as a sophomore at the Ivy League university.

“The mental oscillation between getting through a long program and then rushing yourself to a class and having to learn about calculus is something,” Pulkinen said.

It is what the 22-year-old from Scottsdale, Ariz., signed up for when he decided to continue his figure skating career through the 2026 Olympic season and become a full-time, on-campus student after having deferred his matriculation at Columbia for a year.

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