Ilia Malinin won a second straight world title, but he wanted more

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Ilia Malinin won a second straight world title, but he wanted more

BOSTON — Ilia Malinin won a second straight world title Saturday night, this one by a larger margin than the first.

But, despite his utter dominance of men’s singles skating, Malinin felt upset that he had left something undone.

That’s why he whacked the ice in frustration after finishing a free skate that left him happy because it brought another gold medal but disappointed because he fell short of his goal.

This season, Malinin wanted to further enhance his reputation as the Quadg0d by doing an unprecedented free skate in which all seven jumping passes began with a successful quad, and they were to include all six different types of the jump.

The skating gods apparently still think that is hubris.

He now has tried it unsuccessfully three times.

“It’s a pretty decent challenge that I’ve given myself,” he said.

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Ilia Malinin looks invincible to his top rival at figure skating worlds

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Ilia Malinin looks invincible to his top rival at figure skating worlds

BOSTON - Yuma Kagiyama was smiling when he said it, as if he were trying to lighten the meaning of his words and the implication they carried about the weight of the challenge for any figure skater trying to compete with Ilia Malinin.

After Thursday’s short program at the World Championships, when he finished a close second to reigning world champion Malinin, Kagiyama was asked what impresses him most about the man known as Quadg0d.

“He does all those difficult jumps, and he makes them look effortless,” Japan’s Kagiyama said through a translator. “Maybe he is putting (out) effort, but to us, it looks effortless and really easy.

“And it’s not just his jumps. I feel like his skating and his artistry, his expression is getting better year by year, so I’m starting to think he’s invincible.”

Invincible.

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Jason Brown tries to reboot his Boston story at World Figure Skating Championships

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Jason Brown tries to reboot his Boston story at World Figure Skating Championships

Jason Brown and his coach, Tracy Wilson, came up with a four-year plan for his competitive skating future a few months after the 2022 Winter Olympics, where Brown had a strong sixth-place finish with personal best scores for the short program and total.

They designed a rather unconventional approach to keep Brown mentally fresh and physically healthy for a run at the 2026 Olympics, where he could become, at age 31, the sixth-oldest Olympic men’s singles competitor in the last 90 years.

The idea was that Brown would do a minimal number of competitions in the 2023 and 2024 seasons and spend relatively little time training in Toronto, staying fit by doing lots of show skating. Then he would do a full competitive schedule this season (fall of 2024 through spring 2025), testing how that worked before following a similar schedule in the upcoming Olympic season.

On the surface, it all went well the first two seasons, with Brown finishing second at both the 2023 and 2024 U.S. Championships and fifth at both the 2023 and 2024 World Championships.

But as Brown looked forward to the 2025 World Championships, at the Boston arena where he had not skated since a career-defining moment at nationals in 2014, the metaphorical wheels – his skates - came off after having wobbled the previous two seasons.

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For figure skating family, plane crash has unimaginable link to past tragedy

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For figure skating family, plane crash has unimaginable link to past tragedy

I did not know any of the members of the U.S. figure skating family who died in Wednesday’s tragic accident involving an American Airlines plane and a military helicopter.

Yet I am among those who deeply mourn for them.

Figure skating in the United States is an extended family that includes journalists, despite our best (and necessary) efforts to keep the appropriate relative distance from people we write about so that we can tell the stories that need to be told.

In none of the other sports I covered on a regular basis have I found athletes, coaches and officials as accessible, open-hearted and helpful as in figure skating.

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Ilia Malinin draws closer to his definition of perfection with third U.S. figure skating title

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Ilia Malinin draws closer to his definition of perfection with third U.S. figure skating title

WICHITA, Kansas – Ilia Malinin doesn’t back down.

When all of his jumping passes at last month’s Grand Prix Final were judged to contain under-rotation, he still had a sweatshirt made that reproduced the scoresheet, a memento of his having tried a free skate program with unprecedented difficulty.

And it was a program he had never previously tried in practice.

Hubris?

Nah. Just the quadg0d being himself.

“I really like to push my physical limits and just challenge myself,” he said.

When he could have easily won a third straight U.S. title Sunday with a safely watered-down program, Malinin instead rolled out the same one he used in the Grand Prix Final, packed with the same unprecedented jumping difficulty.

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