Ilia Malinin’s star-making, record-shattering free skate to win the men’s singles at last week’s world figure skating championships in Montreal has registered shockwaves through the sport and beyond.
The flaxen-haired American teenager delivered a mesmerising performance set to music from the TV show Succession that was immediately hailed as the greatest athletic display in the history of figure skating. Performing last in the field of 24 competitors, Malinin became the second person ever to land six quadruple jumps in a single programme and the first to do it with a quad axel, the heart-stopping four-and-a-half-revolution jump that has proven beyond the reach of the sport’s most ambitious talents.
