An Appreciation of Ilia Malinin
The two-time reigning world champion opened the Grand Prix season with the kind of dominant performance we've come to expect from him.
The NBA added a 3-point shooting contest to All-Star Weekend in 1986. At that point, the 3-point shot had been in the league for just seven seasons, as had future Hall of Famer Larry Bird; they both came into the NBA in 1979. Bird was not a prolific 3-point shooter, at least not by the standard we know today. The 1985-86 season was the first time in his career he averaged even one made 3-pointer per game (making exactly 82 in 82 games). Over his first six seasons, Bird made a total of 185 3-pointers. By comparison 25 players made at least that many last season alone. Bird made just 33% of his attempts in that span too.
(I swear, this will be about figure skating soon… just stick with me).
However, despite what seem like meager statistics now, Bird was seen as one of the NBA’s best 3-point shooters. Those 185 made 3s? Only two players in the league had more in that span. And that 33% shooting? That ranked in the top 15.
On top of that, Bird had a reputation as an all-time trash talker. So when he showed up in Dallas for the 3-point contest, he looked around the locker room and casually asked “Who’s coming in second?”
I imagine that’s how two-time reigning world figure skating champion Ilia Malinin shows up at events these days.
The 2025-26 Grand Prix of Figure Skating season kicked off this past weekend in France. As expected, Malinin won gold in men’s singles. But that doesn’t quite capture just how ridiculously dominant he was. His score in the short program was 105.22, which was actually more than three points lower than what he’d posted at the Lombardia Trophy challenger series event last month. It was still good enough to put him ahead of second place Nika Egadze of Georgia by nearly 10 points.
Then on Sunday Malinin came out and posted a ridiculous 215.78 in the free skate, besting the second-best score of the day (by Adam Siao Him Fa of France) by nearly 20 points.
When all the scores were tallied, Malinin had finished with a 321.00. Siao Him Fa’s total was 280.95, a gap of more than 40 points. Malinin finished 71.96 points ahead of fourth-place finisher Lukas Britschgi of Switzerland. Britschgi, by comparison, had a total that was just 51.05 points better than Gabriele Frangipani of Italy, who came in last among the 12 men in the field.
This is an ongoing trend for Malinin, who has won gold at every event he has entered since December 2023. The last time Malinin was anywhere but the top spot of the podium was at this event back in 2023, when he finished second, a mere 2.61 points behind Siao Him Fa. The 321.00 he posted this weekend was his second-highest score in an international event, behind only the 333.76 he put up at the 2024 world championships (which is the second-highest score ever recorded at an international event). This was the sixth time Malinin has topped 310 in international competition over the past two-plus seasons. The only other active skater to do it even once is Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, who posted a personal best of 310.05 at the 2022 Olympics.
Breaking it down even further, Malinin has skated in 14 international events since the start of the 2023-24 season. He’s posted the top program score 24 out of a possible 28 times. The four times he wasn’t? The 2023 GPdF, where he was second in the free skate (going on to finish second), 2024 worlds, where he was third after the short program (and recovered to win gold), and both Skate America and the Grand Prix final last season, in which he won gold despite being second in the free skate.
To call Malinin the favorite to win gold at the Olympics in February understates it. Anything but gold would be a shock bigger than when Dan O’Brien failed to qualify for the 1992 Olympics after the much hyped Dan & Dave Reebok campaign. Malinin’s next Grand Prix assignment is Skate Canada in two weeks, and he should glide to gold there. Then it’ll be the Grand Prix Final in December, U.S. nationals in January, and the Olympics in February, where the myriad American fans who only pay attention to figure skating once every four years will be introduced to someone who might be the most dominant athlete in professional sports today (though after his performance on Friday night, Shohei Ohtani could certainly lay claim to that title).
I had the opportunity to meet Malinin after a Stars on Ice show back in May, and I told him that his short program at the 2025 world championships at TD Garden was the best thing I’d ever seen in that building (a close second: Alysa Liu’s short program one day earlier). And to put in perspective what I meant by that, I listed off some of the other names I’d seen perform there: LeBron James. Stephen Curry. Kobe Bryant. MJ.
“MJ?” Malinin asked. “Jordan?”
I nodded in confirmation. He seemed genuinely appreciative to be in that kind of company. And with apologies to Siao Him Fa, Kagiyama, Mikhail Shaidorov, and the other medal contenders in Milano Cortina, you do have to look outside figure skating to find Malinin’s real competition. Jordan, Ohtani, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Simone Biles, Michael Phelps. The all-time greats who make the impossible look easy. Because that’s what Malinin does every time he takes the ice.
It blows my mind that we have this phenomenally dominant athlete in the US, and he is such a nothing burger here. I'm sure he'll pick up some traction at the next Olympics, but I'm guessing it will be 15 minutes. If skating had more events for medaling, like swimming or gymnastics, he would have more of a chance to build up a domestic fanbase at the Olympics, I think.
Thanks for sharing about your endearing moment meeting him! ☺️