Ilia Malinin, the “quadg0d,” seems heaven-sent for U.S. figure skating

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Ilia Malinin, the “quadg0d,” seems heaven-sent for U.S. figure skating

When Ilia Malinin started skating, at age 6, the rink was basically a day care center for him.

His parents, Tatyana Malinina and Roman Skorniyakov, each a two-time figure skating Olympian for Uzbekistan, both were coaching, and it was both easier and less expensive to have their son with them after school at the SkateQuest facility in Reston, Virginia.

“At the beginning, we didn’t take it seriously,” Malinina said. “We just took him to where we were working, and he was skating there.”

That changed three years later.

With minimal preparation, skating just three times a week, Malinin qualified for the 2015 U.S. Championships in the juvenile division when he was just 9 years old. He finished ninth.

Suitably impressed, Malinin and Skorniyakov started having him skate under their tutelage five times a week. In 2016, just after his 11th birthday, he became national juvenile champion.

Many others soon would be as captivated as his parents by their son’s nascent talent.

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With a likely Olympic team medal, Karen Chen can fill another gap in her career record

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With a likely Olympic team medal, Karen Chen can fill another gap in her career record

Karen Chen was talking before the U.S. Figure Skating Championships about filling a blank on her résumé.

“I told myself, `Karen, you don’t have a nationals silver medal yet,’” Chen said.

Coincidentally – and you will see the coincidence a few paragraphs from now – Chen noted that in answer to a question on a different topic.

It was the question of whether she hoped her performance at nationals would be good enough to earn her a spot in the Olympic team event. Chen did not get that opportunity at her first Olympics in 2018.

There was an element of not counting chickens in Chen’s response, of being more concerned about first assuring the place on the 2022 Olympic team.

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Nathan Chen’s performance will be likely measure of U.S. figure skating results at 2022 Winter Olympics

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Nathan Chen’s performance will be likely measure of U.S. figure skating results at 2022 Winter Olympics

Four years ago, the U.S. figure skating team had its worst results ever at the Winter Olympics.

The 2022 team named after the U.S. Championships ended Sunday could do better than 2018 – although it may not be a substantial improvement, and the assessment of it will depend largely on Nathan Chen’s performance in men’s singles.

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Brilliance at nationals unsurprisingly not enough to earn Ilia Malinin an Olympic spot

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Brilliance at nationals unsurprisingly not enough to earn Ilia Malinin an Olympic spot

Nathan Chen won his sixth straight national figure skating championship Sunday, a feat unmatched since Dick Button won his sixth of seven straight in 1951.

Ilia Malinin finished second, but he upstaged Chen and everyone else in the competition, both in the short program and the free skate.

That Malinin’s two stunning performances still did not earn the 17-year-old a place on the U.S. team for next month’s Winter Olympics in Beijing was not really surprising, given selection criteria that broadly favored results in senior level events the past two seasons.

In a decision complicated by the free skate performances in Nashville, the U.S. Figure Skating selection committee gave the three men’s singles spots to Chen, Vincent Zhou and Jason Brown.

“I think all three of us have really shown over the past two years why we deserve this spot,” Chen said.

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Present and future shock in sparkling nationals short program, with Ilia Malinin bursting into Olympic contention

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Present and future shock in sparkling nationals short program, with Ilia Malinin bursting into Olympic contention

In a span of less than 15 minutes, everyone watching the men’s short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships saw a summary of the last decade in men’s singles skating.

You had a 17-year-old, Ilia Malinin, whose Instagram handle is @quadg0d, burst onto the senior nationals scene with a demonstration of why that choice of sobriquet was not self-aggrandizing and how fast a mastery of big jumps can push a skater toward podiums at significant events. He is a young man for these times in the sport.

And next you had a 27-year-old, Jason Brown, who competed in his first senior nationals 11 years ago, using his mastery of movement, expression and edge work as he fights to stay on podiums without the big jumps that bring big rewards in the sport’s judging system. His skating is timeless and yet relatively out of fashion on contemporary score sheets.

Malinin and Brown each was brilliant in his own way during a competition Saturday in which the overall level was extraordinary, with Nathan Chen and Vincent Zhou taking command at the top and others, like Jimmy Ma and Camden Pulkinen, earning career-best scores with performances that commanded full attention.

“That was a pretty incredible competition,” Zhou said, “not just in U.S. history but in relation to ISU international competitions. Definitely an insane, high-level event.”

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