Will he or won’t he? US figure skater Ilia Malinin still hasn’t tried a quad axel yet

U.S. figure skating sensation Ilia Malinin is known as “The Quad God.” But he hasn’t done his quad axel yet.

Will he? The only figure skater to ever land the 4.5 revolution jump in competition has listed it on all his Milan Cortina Olympic programs so far, but he has also thus far stuck to the less difficult triple axel.

He joked he was being “lazy.” Or maybe he’s just waiting for the finale.

Malinin has a five-point lead over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama and France’s Adam Siao Him Fa going into the free skate, a margin so big that it seems almost insurmountable, and one that gives him some wiggle room should he attempt the quad axel and fail.

The plan Malinin has submitted for Friday night includes it — naturally — part of what would be a record-tying seven quads in all.

“I’m hoping that I’ll feel good enough to do it,” Malinin said, more seriously. “But of course I always prioritize health and safety. So I really want to put myself in the right mindset where I’ll feel really confident to go into it”

Figure skater Ilia Malinin didn’t earn the top score in the men’s short program of the team event Saturday, but he still made history by landing a backflip, a move not seen at the Olympics in decades.

The best laid plans

Planned program content is just that: a plan. Skaters often deviate from it depending upon how they feel.

It may be they had a hard time with an element in practice and change it. Or, they might make a mistake in the midst of their routine — say, messing up the first jump on a combination pass — and they are forced to change their program on the fly.

What makes the quad axel so difficult is that the axel is the only one of figure skating’s six primary jumps that starts facing forward, giving it an extra half revolution. In fact, the jump is so difficult even elite skaters struggle with the triple version of it.

“I never thought I’d see anybody do a quadruple axel,” admitted 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton. “Not in my lifetime.”

Indeed, most people thought it was impossible.

Then Malinin proved it was.

In September 2022, during the off-the-radar U.S. International Figure Skating Classic, he stunned the sport by setting down a near-perfect version of the quad axel as part of his winning free skate. Malinin was just 17 at the time.

How does he do it? By spinning at about 340 revolutions per minute, or about as fast as a ceiling fan set to high.

“Seeing what Ilia has done in the last three years has been mind-boggling,” 1994 Olympic champion Kristi Yamaguchi said. “I know several of us — Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton — we’ve talked, saying, ‘We have never imagined we would be alive to see a quad axel performed and landed in competition,’ and here comes Ilia, just whipping it off like it’s nothing.’”