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American figure skater Ilija Malinin is no stranger to making history on the ice. The 21-year-old, who hails from Virginia, highlighted his free skating gold medal on Sunday night with a back flip that he landed on a single blade – also known as the “Bonaly flip”, named after French figure skater Surya Bonaly, who first performed the move at the 1998 Nagano Games. when it was still forbidden.
On Sunday, Malinin became the first figure skater to legally execute move at the Olympics — which was done for the love of the game, because it didn’t earn him any technical points.
But skating Frolutionary is better known as the first person to successfully land one of the most difficult jumps in figure skating — quadruple axle — at the 2022 competition. He was only 17 years old then.
The move is the only basic forward bounce jump, and involves four and a half rotations in the air.
His quad landing ability even earned him the nickname “Quad God”, which he embraced wholeheartedly making it part of his social media handles.
“How is Ilia Malinin so good at quads? Easy. Talent comes first,” sportswriter Pj Kwong wrote in an email to CBC News.
“He’s a natural jumper,” said Kwong, who is also a veteran figure skating coach. “Then we have to consider the legacy of jumpers who came before him who paved the way and threw down the gauntlet to inspire him to do the impossible.”
Canadian weightlifting Olympian
This includes Canada’s Kurt Browning, a legendary figure skater who himself made history by becoming the first person to successfully land a ratified quadruple jump in competition in 1988. (Quadruple jumps are a broad category that includes the quadruple axel.) Browning said the axel is known as the “king of jumps.”
“The biggest reason skaters believe it is because it’s truly the only jump that essentially propels you forward,Browning told CBC News.
Most jumps in figure skating are performed on the back of the skate, Browning said. That’s partly because the toe — or the small, saw-toothed ridge at the front of the skate — makes it much more difficult to land forward.
“If you jump forward and want to land backwards, you have to do one extra…half turn to do that,” Browning added.
He said most skaters “don’t like” the forward takeoff, but Malinin “obviously does.”
That makes Malinin’s secret weapon “twofold,” Browning said. He has a take-off spring that goes into a jump that allows him to climb straight up. This allows him to stay in the air long enough to get spins.
“He doesn’t have one superpower. He has two or three, as well as his mental strength that allows him to throw in this quadruple axel.”
A family of Olympians
It probably helps that Malinin has two former Olympians as parents and coaches.
Malinin’s parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakovboth are former Olympic figure skaters who competed for Uzbekistan, according to CBS News.
American Ilia Malinin scored 98.00 points to finish second in the men’s Olympic team skating short program. That was enough for the Americans to remain in first place overall.
But despite his superstardom, Malinin told The Associated Press that at the end of the day, skaters are people too.
“I wouldn’t tell people I’m untouchable. I want the opposite. I want people to agree with me,” said Malinin.
“Yeah, I do all these crazy things on the ice that kind of defy physics. I still want them to see that all of us skaters are human beings.”
