Ilia Malininthe quest for the Olympic figure skating gold may not be so easy after all. The same goes for his American team.

Yuma Kagiyama executed a pair of near-perfect quads, one combined with a triple toe loop, and the Japanese star scored 108.67 points for his short program on Saturday night. That edged out Malinin in the segment — he was second with 98.00 — and gave his team 33 points, just one behind defending champion USA midway through the three-day event.

As he waited for his score, his Team USA teammates gathered behind him, waving and covering him with an American flag.

“I just felt excited to be here. Come on, this is the Olympics. You’re talking like this is a bad thing,” said Malinin, the two-time reigning world champion who is unbeaten in his last 14 completed events dating back more than two years.

“It’s so great to be here and be a part of this team,” Malinin said. – It is a sincere life achievement.

Italy was third in the team competition with 28 points, Canada fourth with 27, and Georgia fifth with 25.

Only the top five advanced after the short program, with the Canadians advancing thanks to Stephen Gogolev’s personal best of 92.99. Kevin Aymoz could not match him for France, leaving his team one point below the line.

The second half of the team competition began later Saturday night with the free dance, where world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates returned for the USA. They won the rhythm of the dance on Friday, hours before the opening ceremony, giving the Americans the maximum 10 points and plenty of momentum to start the multi-discipline event.

Now it’s the Japanese with momentum.

“I didn’t feel pressure and I didn’t feel nervous today,” Kagiyama said. “I’m very happy that our score is so close to the USA.”

Before making his Olympic debut, Malinin sauntered through the tunnels inside the Milano Ice Skating Arena wearing a black tank top that read “Quad God,” a nickname that reflects the way he pulls off those unearthly quad spin jumps.

He got the name when he tried to change his Instagram name.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I caught a quad? Quad God, there it is, okay, let’s put it in.'” he told CBS News in an interview last week. “And from there everyone asks, ‘Why did you call yourself a Quad God? You only have one quad.’ And I said, ‘Well, now that I think about it, maybe I should try to get all of them to get Quad God status.'”

The 21-year-old wunderkind didn’t attempt a quadruple jump — a 4 1/2-turn jump that only he has landed in competition — but instead performed a shaky version of the triple. He started with a brilliant opening quad flip and finished his program with a quad lutz-triple toe loop, getting extra points for the combination because it came in the second half of the program.

But when his score was read, Malinin seemed almost stunned that Kagiyama had beaten him – and by a margin.

“It’s only 50% of my full potential here,” Malinin said.

Malinan, whose parents were Olympic skaters for Uzbekistan and whose grandfather was a figure skater for the USSR, started skating at the age of 6.

He won gold at the 2024 and 2025 ISU World Figure Skating Championships.

Kagiyama opened with a quad toe-triple toe combination, hit a quad salchow and ended his short program with an unparalleled triple axel. And unlike Malinin, when Kagiyama’s score was read, he jumped out of his seat with clenched fists raised high.

“I always get good motivation from Ilia because he is one of the skaters who created this moment in figure skating,” Kagiyama said. “He’s a good jumper and he can make the four, so I always think I want to catch him.”

The Americans have been on a mission since the 2022 Beijing Games, where their Olympic triumph was overshadowed Russian doping controversy. The ensuing investigation kept their gold medals in limbo for more than two years, until Chock and Bates were part of the team that finally received them at a ceremony during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Japan has long been considered their biggest rival. And they lived up to those expectations, getting the short programs of Kaori Sakamoto and world doubles champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara to go along with Kagiyama’s triumph on Saturday night.