Ilia Malinin bounces back from Olympic nightmare to win third straight world figure skating title
The "quad god" reels off one huge jump after another, and a backflip for good measure, to retain his world championship title for the third year running.
Gold medalist Ilia Malinin waves to spectators after the medal ceremony at the Figure Skating World Championships in Prague on Saturday. (Petr David Josek / Associated Press) Ilia Malinin is back on the top step of the podium. Six weeks after a disastrous skate knocked the Olympic gold-medal favorite off the podium, the “quad god” reeled off one huge jump after another, and a backflip for good measure, to retain his world championship title for the third year running.
Malinin shouted and punched the air with relief after finishing a skate that showed he had achieved his desire to “move on” from the Olympics after days tormented by his mistakes. He praised the crowd's support, saying: “It was really challenging, really hard but with you guys I was able to make it through. ” His aim, he added, had simply been to get through the free skate “in one piece.
" Skating last after leading the short program, just as he did in Milan, Malinin landed five high-scoring quadruple jumps but not his pioneering quad axel, a jump he didn't attempt at the Olympics. Malinin scored 218. 11 in the free skate for a total 329.
40, far ahead of silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama of Japan on 306. 67. Another Japanese skater, Shun Sato, was third on 288.