By Lynn Rutherford

To many in the figure skating world, Ilia Malinin is a phenomenon, an athletic marvel who can lay claim to being the finest jumper the sport has ever seen and an early favorite for the 2026 Olympic men’s title.

But to Sarah Everhardt, a junior at Battlefield High School in Haymarket, he’s another pal at the skating rink.

“Ilia is a guy that I’ve grown up with and skated with since I was a kid — like, I’ve skated with him forever,” Everhardt, 17, says. “So, I don’t really look at him as ‘the Quadg0d.’ But it’s cool to skate with him. And he shows me how hard I have to work.”

Malinin, 19, and Everhardt train at SkateQuest in Reston, less than 10 miles from Falls Church via Route 7. Both skaters are coached by Malinin’s parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skornyakov, themselves former international competitors for Azerbaijan. They are two of four youngsters from SkateQuest — also including Lucius Kazanecki, winner of the U.S. junior men’s title, and Jasmine Clark, a junior women’s competitor — to take part in the 2024 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, held in Columbus, Ohio last week.

“We try to always be friendly and be like a family together,” Everhardt says of the SkateQuest gang. “Our group will go out to the mall or to dinner occasionally. We’ll just hang out.”

Malinin won his second straight U.S. crown in Columbus, and Everhardt, too, grabbed a share of the spotlight. As Skornyakov sat beside her at Columbus’ Nationwide Arena, the score for her near-perfect free skate to Vivaldi selections, including seven triple jumps, flashed up on the jumbotron: 130.16 points, which lifted her to fourth place overall and a pewter medal in the women’s event.

“[Skornyakov] told me to take it one element at a time through the program, not think of the event as a whole but think of everything separately,” says Everhardt, who was competing in the senior division for the first time. “I had a lot of emotions. I’m happy I skated really well. It was my season’s best.”

As for Malinin, he skated a U.S. personal best in his short program, choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne to a fiery Spanish flamenco. Even without his famous quadruple axel, the four-and-a-half revolution jump only he has mastered, it earned 108.57 points, a new national record. His program included a quad lutz, triple toe loop jump combination – by far the most difficult combination of the event.

“Instead of really focusing on those huge elements, I’ve been able to also add in the performance (quality), even in the beginning of the program,” Malinin said after the short. “Even before you really start moving, you (make) that eye contact (with the crowd) and it just really buffs the energy for me and buffs the energy for the crowd and everyone watching.”

When he won the Grand Prix Final in December, Malinin included a quad axel in his short program for the first time. But in Columbus, the skater was limited by boot problems: a new pair he was breaking in never felt comfortable, so he returned to an old pair he had brought with him.

“Sometimes boots are not as reliable and you try to really think about it, and plan ahead with everything,” he said. “I’m just glad that I was able to really compete and I didn’t have to, you know, make a really strong decision of withdrawing, because it was also possible this could have happened.”

In his free skate, choreographed by Bourne to music from the Showtime series “Succession,” Malinin gave the crowd what it was waiting for: a clean quad axel. It was the second time he landed his trademark jump in competition this season.

“It was a fun skate, especially with all the problems I’ve had the past week with the boots,” he said. “You know, I was happy to get through it. The audience, they were really supporting me and cheering me on. So it was just an amazing feeling to have them get me through the whole program.”

It wasn’t all clear sailing. Malinin planned six quads, and in addition to the axel, landed a lutz and salchow. He fell on a second attempted quad lutz and doubled out of two other planned quads. Still, the free skate earned 185.78 points, giving him 294.35 points total and a 30-point win over Jason Brown. The bronze medal went to Camden Pulkinen with 262.33 points.

“I would say (the botched jumps were due to) equipment issues, but I’m not really disappointed by performance here because I’m still very happy with how I’ve improved other things like my components,” Malinin said. “I’ve definitely seen a huge improvement with just the cleanliness of my program, connecting to the audience, connecting to the judges.”

The panel awarded Malinin higher Program Component Scores (PCS) than ever before, some 7.46 points more than he gained at the U.S. Championships last season. Two judges assigned him a perfect “10” for presentation in the short program, giving him a higher PCS total than that of Brown, generally considered the world’s greatest on-ice stylist.

“The level of skating just continues to be elevated year after year and I think that is incredible,” Brown said. “And you see that in Ilia, the way he’s pushing the sport. I saw that in Nathan (Chen), getting to compete alongside him for so many years. He just kept pushing and pushing the sport, and Ilia is doing the same thing in his own way. And I think it’s incredible, mad respect.”

Amber Glenn won her first U.S. women’s title in Columbus, while Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the reigning world champions, won their fifth ice dance crown. Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea claimed pairs’ gold.

Next up for Malinin is Art on Ice, a series of eight shows in Switzerland from February 8 – 17. Then, it is on to the 2024 World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal, Quebec March 18-24, where he is favored to challenge for his first world title.