The failure at the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games did not get rid of his talent or his motivation. Ilia Malinin collected 329.40 points, with a program punctuated by five quadruple jumps. He is ahead of the Japanese Yuma Kagiyama (306.67 pts) and Shun Sato (288.54 pts).
The 21-year-old skater got back in the saddle on Thursday with an exceptional short program which put him in the lead. On Saturday, however, he was more cautious than at the Olympic Games and lightened the technical content of his performance, notably swapping his usual quadruple axel, his trademark, for a triple axel. He also reduced the number of quadruple jumps from seven to five, bouncing back impressively after the cataclysm of the Games.
“I enjoyed every moment and I’m so happy to be here,” Malinin reacted, after receiving prolonged cheers from the public, who continue to applaud him despite his Olympic failure. “I am so grateful for everything and everyone. I really felt encouraged and loved. » “My goal was to finish my free program without incident, and that’s clearly what happened,” he said.
These Skating Worlds are taking place barely a month after the Milan Cortina Olympics which gave rise to a lunar scenario in the men’s category. In the lead after the short, Malinin, the great skating star undefeated for more than two years, advanced for the free as the overwhelming favorite, before collapsing under the pressure to take an improbable 8th place. In Milan, almost all the favorites missed out in the free and the title finally went to everyone’s surprise to the Kazakhstani Mikhail Shaidorov, who did not make the trip to Prague.
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