17-Year-Old American Figure Skater, Ilia Malinin, Leaves Everyone Stunned With His Performance at the 2022 Skate America

Ilia Malinin is making history with his performances this season. The 17-year-old became a part of history by landing the quadruple Axel at two events.

Ilia Malinin is an American figure skater. He is the 2022 Junior World Champion. He also won the 2021 JGP France 1 Championships and the 2021 JGP Austria Championship.

Ilia Malinin is surprised by his own performance

The young figure skater landed the nearly perfect quadruple Axel at two events this season. With this, he became the youngest Skate America men’s champion in the event’s history.

While his performance mesmerized the audience, they weren’t the only ones who got stunned. His performance caught Ilia off guard. In an interview with Olympics.com, Ilia shared he was still unable to process what went on during the season. He further added that he had thought that he would fall while performing. Ilia had never imagined he would be a part of history, definitely not at such a young age.

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His performance has earned him the nickname ‘Quadgod’. The Quadgod said, “I went for it and that it went pretty well. So, I’m definitely excited about how I landed it. Like, I wasn’t expecting to even land it at all. I thought I was going to fall or do a step out, but I still can’t believe I’m on history right now. This doesn’t feel real.”

About the ‘Quadgod’ Malinin

In December 2004, Ilia was born to Russia-born singles skaters Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov. He was born in Fairfax, Virginia. Admiring his mother’s skating, Malinin took up figure skating at 6. In 2016, Ilia won his first championship at the 2016 U.S. National Juvenile Figure Skating Championships.

Since then, Malinin has won several national and international championships. Unfortunately, Ilia could not participate in the 2020 U.S. Championships due to his injury. However, he won the 2020 World Junior Championships because of his early season results. Malinin created three World records at the 2022 World Junior Championships. He holds these world records in the Junior men’s short program, Junior men’s free skate, and Junior men’s combined total.

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Currently, Malinin has qualified for the Grand Prix Final which will be held in December. The event is going to be in Finland. Additionally, in this competition, Malinin will be up against the World Champion from Japan, Shoma Uno.