Ilya Malinin won the World Championship with a historic performance

The World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal turned out to be extremely generous with records that, without any exaggeration, can be called historical. The author of the main one was the American singles skater Ilya Malinin. He performed the most difficult performance in the history of figure skating, performing six quadruple jumps in the program, and took the championship gold with a 25-point margin over his closest pursuer. The tournament among sports pairs was won by the Canadian duo Maxime Deschamps with 40-year-old Dianna Stellato-Dudek, the oldest world champion in history, and Kaori Sakamoto from Japan was the first singles player in 56 years with three victories at world championships in a row.

There are achievements in world sports that, no matter how many decades have passed, one cannot help but admire. For example, the 100-meter dash in 9.58 seconds by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. And what the singles skater from the USA Ilya Malinin did on Sunday night at the Montreal World Championships is achieving the same order.

In fact, on the eve of the men’s free program, there were very serious doubts that at the end of the World Championships 19-year-old Malinin would give a super hit. After the short program, the American was third, having passed ahead two Japanese at once – not only two-time world champion and bronze medalist of the Beijing Olympics Shomu Uno, but also vice-champion of the same Games Yuma Kagiyama.

The reason for the doubts was not Ilya Malinin’s third intermediate place. The gap from the leader was less than two points – this is for the male genre, where in one cascade you can get more than 20, insignificant values. And not even an average performance in a short with simplified, of course, by Ilya Malinin’s standards, content, which included, instead of his signature four-turn axel, the simplest of quads – a solo sheepskin coat. There seemed to be nothing surprising in this either: well, just think, I decided not to take risks and rely on the purity of execution. After all, there is a truth that has already been proven many times by top skaters like Nathan Chen, who was unable to dig himself out even with five quads after failing in the short program at the PyeongChang Olympics: you can’t win with a short program, but you can easily lose.

But what really made me worry was the statement Ilya Malinin made immediately after the short program.

He admitted that the last two weeks before the world championship were very difficult for him, that his preparations went awry due to illness and injury, that he was forced to miss training over and over again.

And in general I doubted that he would go to Montreal – the final decision on the trip was made less than a week before the start.

It seems all the more incredible and unthinkable what this fair-haired, long-legged boy did in the four minutes he had on the ice. Seven jumping elements – and not a single one without “ultra-si”. Four solo quadruple jumps, including the most difficult axel (except for Malinin, no one in the world does it) – in the first half of the program. Two more cascades with quads and a sequence with a triple axel in the second. Malinin landed one jump after another so easily, as if these were not extremely complex elements that require maximum concentration, a colossal reserve of physical strength and are generally subject to only a few, but a game of hopscotch somewhere in the yard.

Only after the end of the program did it become clear what this triumphant skate actually cost Malinin: the skater grabbed his head, collapsed on the ice, and then could not pull himself together and get up.

The young man could no longer contain his emotions and burst into tears amid the thunder of never-ending applause.

For the free program, Ilya Malinin scored 227.79 points – a new world record – and a total of 333.76. He overtook his closest rival, Yuma Kagiyama, by 24.11 points, and the Frenchman Adam Xiao Him Fa, who took bronze, by 49.37.

Hypothetically, only Malinin himself can surpass this result today: by complicating the short program, by improving the notorious skating skills. And no one else.

Competitions in other genres also produced a couple of interesting records. Thus, the sports pairs competition was won by the duo from the host country of the championship, Dianna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps. The scores they scored can hardly be called impressive – the couple earned a total of 221.56 points. At the Russian Championship, the main start for domestic figure skaters in conditions of international isolation, all the winners received significantly more: Anastasia Mishina with Alexander Gallyamov earned 244.85, Alexandra Boykova with Dmitry Kozlovsky – 236.32, Ekaterina Chikmareva and Matvey Yanchenkov – 227.97. The pairing of Stellato-Dudek with Deschamps is interesting, with a different background. For them, this is their first serious victory at international competitions, and this year their partner is actually in her fifties.

Dianna Stellato-Dudek showed great promise in singles skating a quarter of a century ago, winning the Junior Grand Prix Final in the 1999–2000 season and then taking silver at the World Junior Championships. But the athlete’s adult career did not work out, so she decided to quit sports and switch to cosmetology.

Only after 15 years – by the way, exactly the same age as Yulia Lipnitskaya at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Alina Zagitova at the Olympics in Pyeongchang and Kamila Valieva in Beijing – Dianna Stellato-Dudek realized that she wanted to realize her main dream and get to the Olympics. But it was also obvious to her: women’s singles skating had gone far ahead. The Canadian decided to get comfortable in pairs. And even if not the first time (at first she skated for several seasons with another partner, American Nathan Bartholomew), but she eventually succeeded.

Now 40-year-old Stellato-Dudek is the oldest world champion in figure skating and is preparing for the 2026 Olympics.

The victory in women’s single skating of the undisputed favorite of the season, Japanese Kaori Sakamoto, also turned out to be associated with a record. The athlete won the third world championship in a row and became the first figure skater in 56 years to do so. The last time such an achievement was achieved was by American Peggy Fleming, who took three titles in a row from 1966 to 1968.

It is possible that if the suspension of Russian figure skaters continues, Kaori Sakamoto will be able to extend her winning streak. If she takes the fourth gold, she will be equal in number of victories to the legendary German figure skater Katharina Witt.

Ekaterina Remizova