By Lynn Rutherford

Who is this skater, crisply executing staccato steps, hitting musical crescendos with finesse and finishing nearly every movement? 

He looks familiar, but he’s not the self-proclaimed “quad god.” That was last season. From now on, you can just call the Falls Church area’s Ilia Malinin a well-rounded skater.

The 300 or so spectators gathered for the Autumn Classic International in Montreal, Quebec last week saw the unveiling of Malinin 2.0 — a sleeker, more mature version of the jumping phenom who landed the sport’s first-ever quadruple axel, captured the 2023 U.S. title and gained a world bronze medal. The lifelong Northern Virginia native won his opening event of the 2023-2024 season with 281.  68 points, a resounding 44 points over the field.

“I started having a lot of successful things last season,” Malinin, 18, said after his free skate in Montreal last Saturday. 

“But there are other things that I have to give effort to, in order to get even higher.”

Malinin earned the highest technical element scores in the free skate at the 2023 World Figure Skating Championships, but ranked just 11th in program component (composition, presentation and skating skills) scores. It was a harsh message from judges: quadruple jumps are fine, but we want more. And he heard them, loud and clear.

The vaunted quad axel did not appear in Montreal, although Malinin hit five quads total: two in his short program, set Roni Benise’s flamenco “Malaguena,” and three in his free skate, choreographed to the “Succession” soundtrack. Other elements came to the fore. 

“I think over the summer we put a lot more time and effort into spins, a lot more into choreography, and even the jumps, to get them more solid so they have a better landing and better flow out,” Malinin said. “(We wanted) to take what I have through the basics and to sort of up it and give it that extra final detail and final finish.”

Autumn Classic is a lowkey event, one of the early fall international competitions where top skaters test out new programs, gain feedback from judges and technical callers and, in general, gear themselves up for the 2023-2024 season. 

Malinin, accompanied by his father and coach, Roman Skorniakov, was as relaxed as the ambience. He freely mixed with the crowd at Sportplexe Pierrefonds and posed for selfies with excited fans just a half hour before taking the ice for his programs, something that would be distinctly frowned upon at a Grand Prix event or U.S. Championships.

“For the first competition, we wanted to really just see how the programs look overall under pressure, how I am keeping up with stamina,” he said. “We can then go back to practicing and see what small things we need to work on, and from there we can add more challenging technical content.”

All this talk of working on presentation and artistry does not obscure the teenager’s jumping prowess, very likely the greatest the sport has ever seen. His practices in Montreal included quad loops, the only four-revolution jump he has not yet landed in competition. He tried it in his free skate, but opened up and did a double.

“I find it really cool that I’ve landed (five different) quads in competition so far,” Malinin said, resurrecting a touch of last season’s swagger. “Another goal for me is to try this loop, because it’s kind of challenging for me but also because it’s the last one I have left to do. I want to do it, because that way I can put my name out there as landing every quad in competition.”

Nor has he bid a permanent goodbye to his trademark. The quad axel will likely return later this season. 

“For me, it’s really important that first I also try to build those other aspects of skating I was really lacking in last season,” he said. “And when that gets better, I will be able to try to add the quad axel in for both the short and the long program. It depends on how I’m feeling and how everything is going in terms of improvement and progress.”

Judging panels are varied and fickle, but Malinin’s total PCS in Montreal are already more than two points higher than his tally at the 2023 world championships. Should they continue to improve – and should Malinin add the quad axel to both of his programs – he will be tough for any skater, including two-time Japanese world champion Shoma Uno, to beat.

Perfecting his skating skills isn’t taking up all of Malinin’s time. Although the 2023 graduate of George C. Marshall High School practices an average of four to five hours a day at his rink in Reston, he finds time to take two classes at George Mason University: an online mathematics class, and a modern and contemporary dance class.

“(The dance class) is helping me with all of the movements in skating and learning how to improvise a lot better,” he said. “It helps me with flexibility, balance and coordination, all of those things that help me get better as a skater. Already I see a pretty huge difference.”

In other Autumn Classic results, U.S. ice dancers Eva Pate and Logan Bye won their first international title with 191.20 points. Two-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan took the women’s crown with 203.20 points, and Canadian champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps upset Japan’s world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara to win pairs gold with 203.62 points.