Commanding the ice again after recent downfall, Ilia Malinin wins world junior gold in runaway

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Commanding the ice again after recent downfall, Ilia Malinin wins world junior gold in runaway

When you pick “quadg0d,” for an Instagram handle, the hubris factor comes into play.

It did for Ilia Malinin in the free skate at last month’s World Championships, when the skating gods reminded him that ice is slippery for mortals trying to navigate it divinely on thin blades.

So Malinin found himself reassured to get back on solid footing as he won the World Junior Championships in a runaway Saturday in Tallinn, Estonia.

“I am relieved that I finished the season really, really good,” Malinin said.

He did it with junior record scores in the short program (88.99), free skate (187.12) and total (276.11), beating silver medalist Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan by 41.80 points. That was more than twice the previous largest winning margin, 19.12, by Adam Rippon of the U.S. in 2009.

And Malinin did it with four fully rotated quadruple jumps, reprising his dazzling free skate at the U.S. Championships, when his silver medal performance led to controversy after he was not selected for the Olympic team.

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Under the circumstances, figure skating worlds – and future – hard to assess

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Under the circumstances, figure skating worlds – and future – hard to assess

Even in normal times, it always has been hard to draw a lot of conclusions from the World Figure Skating Championships that immediately follow the Olympics.

The rigors of an Olympic season lead many medalists to take a pass on worlds. Those who do compete often are obviously fatigued.

It is exponentially harder to assess the competition that ended Saturday in Montpellier, France.

No world meet has taken place in more abnormal circumstances.

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With a surprising medal at worlds, Vincent Zhou starts to step out of his Olympic pit

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With a surprising medal at worlds, Vincent Zhou starts to step out of his Olympic pit

Vincent Zhou apologized a couple days ago for sounding like a broken record, stuck at the point of describing his Olympic nightmare, a story that sounded just as poignant and painful in every retelling.

The fates conspired to overwhelm Zhou last month in Beijing, leaving him to deal with the sadness of missed opportunities while spending a week in COVID-19 quarantine.

It was bad enough that a positive COVID-19 test forced him to withdraw from the singles competition after having helped the U.S. finish second to the Russian Olympic Committee in the team event. Then he lost the chance to celebrate the team medal in Beijing because the doping case involving Russian Kamila Valieva meant that medal presentation has been delayed until it is resolved, likely several months from now.

Finally, there was insult added to injury: when Zhou tried to board the bus for the Closing Ceremony, where he hoped to find some redemptive joy in his Olympic experience, an official said he had been identified as a COVID-19 close contact and could not go.

Three weeks later, waking up with the sense of being in what he called a “bottomless pit,” Zhou told his agent and coaches and others close to him that he felt his whole career has been a failure and for nothing.

In that mental state, he was ready to drop out of the World Championships in Montpellier, France, until another emotion took over, the feeling of not wanting to live with the regret of not having tried. Somehow, Zhou pulled himself together to do more than just try, and he wound up skating well enough to win the bronze medal, a result that reminded the two-time Olympian not to lose faith in himself.

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Still just 16, Alysa Liu has met the challenges of going from insouciant prodigy to world medalist

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Still just 16, Alysa Liu has met the challenges of going from insouciant prodigy to world medalist

You look at Alysa Liu, and you see a 16-year-old with braces, and it doesn’t seem possible she still is that young because of how much has happened to her in the past four years, all of it in the public eye.

Liu has gone through adolescence under the relentless glare of a spotlight she attracted in January 2019, at age 13, by becoming the youngest U.S. women’s singles champion ever. She was a prodigy who would bear huge expectations for two seasons before she was even eligible to compete at the senior level in her sport.

It all was so easy at the start, with one landmark achievement after another, a second U.S. title in 2020, victories on the Junior Grand Prix circuit, history-making triple axel and quadruple jumps.

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At worlds, a men’s short program filled with powerful emotion and exceptional skating

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At worlds, a men’s short program filled with powerful emotion and exceptional skating

If they did a highlight reel from the men’s short program at the 2022 World Figure Skating Championships, it might turn into a feature-length film.

It would include scenes of heartrending and powerful emotion. Scenes with one terrific performance after another. A scene showing almost improbable brilliance from a man making an unexpected second appearance at worlds and another scene showing confirmatory brilliance from a teen making a highly anticipated debut at worlds.

Numbers really can’t do justice to what took place over four hours Thursday in Montpellier, France, but they can provide some parameters to assess it.

Twelve of the 29 competitors had personal best scores, a group that included the first (Shoma Uno), third (Kazuki Tomono), fourth (Ilia Malinin) and fifth (Daniel Grassl) finishers.

Each of the top four, led by three Japanese, scored over 100 points, the first time that has happened in a men’s short program at the world championships. Uno had 109.63, Yuma Kagiyama 105.69 and Tomono 101.12, with Malinin of the United States at 100.16.

And the man who finished 22nd, Ivan Shmuratko of war-ravaged Ukraine, brought the crowd to its feet in a touching ovation just by being there, for wearing a simple blue practice shirt with a heart-shaped patch showing the colors of his country’s flag. How sad it was that officials saw fit to give him a deduction for a “costume / prop” violation.

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