The main fight of the season in the men’s singles genre will take place at the World Figure Skating Championships

At the World Figure Skating Championships, which starts on Wednesday in Montreal, Canada, the main fight of the season will take place in the men’s singles genre. Team USA figure skater and master of quadruple jumps Ilya Malinin, who calls himself Quad God, will face his principal rival for the first time since the December Grand Prix final – the brightest figure skater from France, Adam Xiao Him Fa. In the women’s discipline, which remained without intrigue after the removal of the Russians, the undisputed leader of the season – the Japanese Kaori Sakamoto – will claim the third gold in a row: she has not made a single serious misfire since the beginning of the year.

The World Figure Skating Championships, which will be held for the third time without Russian athletes, are saved from the status of the most lackluster tournament of the decade by the incredibly hot confrontation among men. There, in contrast to the pairs events, which sank greatly after the stars of the 2022 Beijing Olympics retired from the sport, and women’s skating, which simply rolled back ten years without the Russians, there are still many truly interesting figures.

The focus is, of course, on the confrontation between the two strongest skaters of the present time – the main newsmaker of the discipline, 19-year-old ultraquadist Ilya Malinin and 23-year-old Adam Xiao Him Fa. A year ago, many experts considered both of them as favorites, but then the assault on the podium of the main tournament, and for both, ended in failure. Xiao Him Fa crumbled under pressure and finished at the bottom of the top ten. And Malinin, having not yet completely parted with the status of yesterday’s junior, was left only with bronze, behind more “component” and “rolling” rivals – the Japanese Shoma Uno and the South Korean athlete Cha Junhwan.

Over the course of the year, both skaters – Malinin and Xiao Him Fa – have become noticeably more skilled. Now the claims to gold of Ilya Malinin, the son of Tatyana Malinina, a singles skater who competed for Uzbekistan and winner of the Four Continents Championship, look much more serious. He not only marked this season with a series of grandiose achievements – he jumped in the short program at the December Grand Prix final, the most difficult and expensive jump in existence – an axel in four and a half revolutions, scored more than 300 points in the total program three times, but also added in the second assessment. It is clear that Malinin cannot yet compare with the masters of gliding – say, with the Canadian Jason Brown, but in relation to himself the athlete has definitely progressed. In addition, he has already become familiar to the judges, which should also have a positive impact on his component score.

Adam Xiao Him Fa, a Frenchman of Mauritian origin, also gained noticeably. Xiao Him Fa is the only skater who managed, albeit only by a couple of points, to beat Ilya Malinin this season. This happened, however, only once at Adam Xiao Him Fa’s home stage of the Grand Prix in Angers, France. There he achieved another valuable achievement: the skater received a score of 306.78 and became the first European who, after updating the judging system, scored more than 300 points in one tournament.

Another athlete who cannot be written off is the bronze medalist of the Beijing Olympics, 26-year-old Japanese Shoma Uno. This season, however, he is extremely unlucky: time after time he makes serious mistakes in the free program and systematically ends up in second place. But for Uno, the World Championship is an extremely happy start. The student of the legendary Swiss figure skater Stephane Lambiel, who traditionally manages to bring Uno to the main competitions in good shape, took home the world championship gold twice in a row – in 2022 and 2023.

In women’s single skating, Kaori Sakamoto will compete as the current world champion in Montreal. There is practically no doubt that it will bring gold to Japan. The figure skater, after her main rivals from Russia were banned from competing at international competitions, wins almost all the tournaments in which she competes. Sakamoto was the only figure skater who could impose competition on the Russians even at the time when they performed on the international stage: in particular, she took bronze at the 2022 Olympics, beating Kamila Valieva.

Interesting fact: Kaori Sakamoto is the only competitor who managed to score more than 150 points during her free program during her career. For comparison, the closest pursuer from Belgium, Luna Hendricks, who is often called the Japanese competitor, earned 138.59 points at her victorious European Championship in January. There will be no more athletes who pose a serious threat to Sakamoto in Montreal. But Hendrix shines gold only in one case: if Sakamoto allows a series of serious breakdowns. And this hasn’t happened to her for a long time.

Ekaterina Remizova