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U.S. figure skater Ilia Malinin is no stranger to making history on the ice. The 21-year-old, who hails from Virginia, underlined his gold medal-clinching free skate on Sunday night with a backflip that he landed on one blade — also known as “the Bonaly flip,” named after French skater Surya Bonaly, who was the first to pull off the move at the 1998 Nagano Games, when it was still banned.
On Sunday, Malinin became the first figure skater to legally execute the move at the Olympics — one that was done for the love of the game, since it didn’t earn him any technical points.
But the skating revolutionary is better known for being the first person to successfully land one of the hardest jumps in figure skating — the quadruple axel — in competition in 2022. He was just 17 years old at the time.
The move is the only basic jump with a forward takeoff, and involves four and a half rotations in the air.
His knack for landing quad jumps has even earned him the nickname “Quad God,” which he’s embraced wholeheartedly by making it a part of his social media handles.
“How is Ilia Malinin so good at quads? Easy. Talent is the first thing,” sports writer Pj Kwong wrote in an email to CBC News.
“He is a natural jumper,” said Kwong, who is also a veteran figure skating coach. “Then we need to take into account the legacy of the jumpers who came before him who paved the way and threw down the gauntlet to inspire him to take on the impossible.”
A Canadian Olympian weighs in
That includes Canada’s own Kurt Browning, a legendary figure skater who himself made history by becoming the first person to successfully land a ratified quad jump in competition in 1988.(Quad jumps are a broad category that includes the quadruple axel.) Browning said the axel is known to be the “king of jumps.”
“The biggest reason why skaters believe that is because it’s truly the only jump that essentially initiates forward,” Browning told CBC News.
Most jumps in figure skating are landed on the back of the skate, Browning said. That’s partially because the toe pick — or the small, saw-like ridge at the front of the skate — makes it much more difficult to land forward.
“If you jump off forward and want to land backwards, you have to get one extra … half of a revolution in to make that happen,” Browning added.
He said most skaters “don’t love” the forward takeoff, but Malinin “obviously does.”
That makes Malinin’s secret weapon “twofold,” Browning said. He has a spring in his takeoff going into the jump that allows him to ascend straight up. This lets him stay in the air long enough to get the rotations in.
“He doesn’t have one superpower. He has two or three, as well as his mental strength that allows him to get this quad axel in.”
A family of Olympians
It probably also helps that Malinin has two former Olympians for parents and coaches.
Malinin’s parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, are both former Olympic skaters themselves, having competed for Uzbekistan, according to CBS News.
American Ilia Malinin scored 98.00 points to finish in second place in the Olympic figure skating team event men’s short program. That was good enough to keep the Americans in the top spot overall.
But despite his superstardom, Malinin told The Associated Press that at the end of the day, skaters are human, too.
“I wouldn’t tell people I’m untouchable. I want the opposite. I want people to relate to me,” Malinin said.
“Yes, I’m doing all these crazy things on the ice that defy physics in some ways. I still want them to see all of us skaters are human beings.”
