The god of quads jumped 8 quads at the World Championship – never fell, but lost. How so?

18-year-old American Ilya Malinin continues the quad jump revolution. But it seems that figure skating is not ready for it.

At the World Championships in Saitama, Ilya performed 6 quads in a free program, one of them is unique and subject only to him. And remained only with bronze.

Let’s figure out why it happened.

1. After the short program, Ilya was second – after  Shoma Uno . It was not possible to break away due to the content: both of them performed two quads without errors. And the stock of the Japanese in the components gave a lead of 4 points. However, before the free program, this is not so much.

In addition, Malinin nevertheless completed the minimum task: this season he often plucked a short one, and then paved the way to the podium with quadruples. Not a particularly difficult task for someone who calls himself the God of Quads, but Ilya still made it easier to prepare for the second day of the World Championships.

2. It’s even scary to look at the application in the free program: 6 quads, the first crown axel. Malinin is the only figure skater in history to whom this jump purely obeyed. Even the great Yuzuru Hanyu left the sport without fulfilling the cherished element.

But Malinin has a quad-axel at almost every start.

For the World Championship, he extremely complicated the content – and it’s not even about six quads (Nathan Chen gave this back at the 2018 Olympics). The quad lutz returned to the program – due to the consequences of the injury, Ilya did not take it until the January US Championship.

Even a combination without quads is a sequence of the most expensive triples: Lutz and Axel.

Well, in total for the tournament, Malinin jumped 8 quads and never fell! But no one has been able to do this.

3. Historical rental began with a quadruple axel. Ilya confidently entered the jump, slightly “pecked” on landing, but got pluses on the GOE scale. Although the opinions of the judges were divided here: one of them put +3, the other -1, but the majority – a neutral 0.

But just look at the height – 0.84 m (thanks to the Japanese broadcast for the graphics)!

Then a small decline followed: a step-out on a flip and a blurry landing on a lutz. Both jumps with under-rotations in a quarter. Instead of the base 22.5 points – only 14.49. For comparison: for one perfect quad-flip, Uno got 15.24.

The under-rotation also got out on the second quadruple lutz – the oiler cascade caused questions from the judges.

4. Errors on three jump elements out of seven explain the low amount of bonuses – only 0.42 points. For understanding: GOE brought Shosma 15.5 points, Cha Jung Hwan, who took silver, 20.25.

Of course, Malinin did not lose as much in technique as Eteri Tutebirdze’s student Daniel Grassl – he missed 12 points, and the protocol is full of minuses. But if Ilya relies on technique, then he should create more groundwork with it than a couple of points. Otherwise, why so many quadruples?