American figure skater Ilia Malinin is a top contender for two gold medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Known as the ‘Quad God,’ Malinin possesses an unparalleled array of jumps and is the two-time reigning world champion.
His parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, were both Olympic figure skaters who now serve as his coaches.
He arrives at the moment he has been waiting for just as he imagined he would: With the greatest array of jumps any figure skater in history has ever possessed; with his parents, Olympians both, by his side as his coaches and confidants; and with irrepressible delight over the prospect of what could be about to happen.
Has the sport of figure skating ever seen anyone quite like American prodigy Ilia Malinin? Here’s the quick answer to that question: No.
And has any 21-year-old wunderkind ever appeared to be more comfortable in his or her own skin than the young man with the perpetual sly grin, the prodigious “Quad God” social media presence, the Huck Finn hair and the lithe body built for the four-revolution jumps he flicks off every few seconds on the ice? Again, the answer is no.
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The pressure at the Olympics is enormous. The ice is slippery. Even the best skaters make mistakes. But given all those caveats, let’s welcome the 2026 Winter Olympic year with a proclamation: If Malinin doesn’t win two gold medals next month in Milan (one in the team event for the United States, one in the men’s competition), it will be a very big surprise.
Some athletes don’t like to hear people talk like that. Malinin possesses the confidence to not mind at all. In fact, despite winning the last three U.S. men’s national titles — with a fourth predicted this week — and the past two world championships, he does think about the unthinkable: That something might go wrong and he won’t win the men’s Olympic gold medal in Milan.
“Honestly, sometimes I have those thoughts a little bit, and a lot of the times that comes from me not having the best practices or the best days, and I think that’s really understandable,” Malinin said during a recent call with reporters. “Everyone expects you to be so perfect and really know what you’re doing all the time. But sometimes you’re not always perfect. You can have a day where nothing works out and you kind of just have to go through that.
“But I always trust the fact that I can turn around the next day and really come up with a fresh new mindset to approach, for example, a practice where let’s say a jump wasn’t going well, and it really put me down. The next day, I’ll spend more time on it and really just make sure that I can have the most confidence going into, for example, the Olympics.”
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This kind of openness, and the fearlessness it reveals, does have its limits. Asked recently in an exclusive interview for the new USA TODAY podcast Milan Magic if anything scares him, Malinin said, “I’m actually afraid of heights.”
Wait, what? The first skater in history to launch himself into the air for seven quadruple jumps in a long program doesn’t like heights?
“Very ironic,” he said. Then he explained it has nothing to do with his jumping. “I would say (heights in a) tall building,” adding with a laugh that he has no “scientific explanation” for it.
Malinin was born into figure skating. His mother, Tatiana Malinina, is from the Soviet Union, Siberia specifically, and competed at 10 consecutive world figure skating championships for Uzbekistan. She finished eighth at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, the competition in which Tara Lipinski won the gold medal and Michelle Kwan the silver. Malinina finished fourth at the 1999 world championships as well, and she also competed at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, but withdrew after the short program with the flu.
Malinin’s father, Roman Skorniakov, represented Uzbekistan at the same two Olympics, 1998 and 2002, finishing 19th both times. He and Malinina were married in 2000 and became skating coaches in the United States, moving to the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where, in December 2004, Ilia was born. He took the Russian masculine form of his mother’s last name because his parents were concerned that Skorniakov was too difficult to pronounce.
As a young boy, Malinin ran around skating rinks with a soccer ball under his arm. “When I first started skating, it was just going to be a recreational hobby,” he said on Milan Magic, the first episode of which drops on Jan. 10. “My parents didn’t want me to go into skating. They wanted me to see if I would find another passion because they knew, of course, the time, the effort, the dedication it was. They went through all of this, all these troubles, sacrifices, and they were like, I don’t think we want any more skaters in the family. But here we are, two skaters in the family now, and me coming up on my first Olympic Games. So I think it was kind of meant to be.”
One particularly poignant moment in his mother’s life has stayed with him, he said on the podcast.
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“A lot of the times my parents tell me that I should always be grateful for everything, because, of course, knowing them, their story, they grew up in a very hard life. My mom’s grandmother, she had to sell her wedding ring to get my mom her first pair of skates, and that just made my heart melt, because I’m looking at myself now and I’m like, I’m so spoiled, I should be extremely grateful for everything I have — but I’m so grateful for my parents, because without them, I would not be where I am today.”
His father travels with him to competitions, while his mother usually stays home, coaching the couple’s other skaters, including Ilia’s younger sister. “They know exactly everything that can happen, all the goods and bads about figure skating,” Malinin said a few years ago.
Outside of the rink, Malinin grew up like many American kids with a love of Lego and video games. He graduated from George C. Marshall High School in Fairfax County, Va., Class of 2023, and takes classes at George Mason University.
But these days, it’s all about the skating as the Milan Olympics beckon. Malinin continues to tease “the quint:” a five-revolution quintuple jump, not for the Olympics, but perhaps afterward. And there will be more jumping and competing to come. He is talking about trying for at least two more Winter Olympics, 2030 in the French Alps and 2034 in Salt Lake City.
The wear and tear on a skater’s body, all those jumps day after day on the unforgiving ice, can scuttle the most earnest of youthful plans. But as a new year begins, Malinin was allowed to dream, and dream big. He will only be 25 in 2030 and 29 in 2034.
“I’m playing everything by ear and how I feel just in general, and the passion I have for skating,” he said. “So who knows, might be a fourth or fifth (Olympics). I mean, we’ll see how long I can keep going.”
But first things first. The U.S. nationals are this week, he takes the ice Thursday night for the men’s short program. Then Milan, here he comes.
