Ilia Malinin

Ilia Malinin (born December 2, 2004) is an American figure skater, the 2026 Olympic gold medalist in the team event, and a three-time world champion in men’s singles (2024, 2025, 2026). He is best known by the nickname he gave himself at age 13 and never lived down: Quad God. The label stuck because Malinin made it impossible to use any other shorthand. In September 2022, at the U.S. International Classic in Lake Placid, he became the first skater in history to land a fully rotated quadruple Axel in competition, the only quad jump no one had ever cleanly executed in the sport’s hundred-plus years of judged events. He has since landed it dozens of times. He is, as of this writing, still the only person who has ever done it. He trains at SkateQuest in Reston, Virginia, under his parents and coaches, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, both of whom were Olympic figure skaters for Uzbekistan, and he is enrolled at George Mason University as an exploratory studies major.

His career has been a study in compounding difficulty. By his mid-teens he had landed every quadruple jump used in competition (toe loop, Salchow, loop, flip, Lutz, and Axel), and by 2024 he was world champion. In December 2025, at the ISU Grand Prix Final in Nagoya, he became the first skater to land seven cleanly rotated quadruple jumps in a single free skate, a program he won by 30 points. Three weeks earlier, at Skate Canada in October 2025, he set a senior world record of 228.97 in the free skate. Going into the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, he had not lost a competition since December 2023, a 14-event win streak that was the longest in men’s skating in decades. He was the heaviest gold-medal favorite in men’s figure skating since Yuzuru Hanyu at Pyeongchang.

Then came Milan. Malinin helped Team USA win gold in the team event with a 200.03 free skate, then took a five-point lead into the men’s individual final after a clean short program. In the free skate on February 13, 2026, the 21-year-old fell twice and finished eighth, surrendering the Olympic title to a 21-year-old Kazakh debutant, Mikhail Shaidorov, in one of the largest upsets in Olympic figure skating history. Six weeks later in Prague, Malinin won his third consecutive world title by 22.73 points, opened the season’s last competition with a quadruple flip and closed it with a backflip and his signature “raspberry twist,” and described the experience as “almost no pressure at all.” His next competitive cycle begins in fall 2026, with the 2030 French Alps Olympics already on the horizon.

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Quick Facts

Featured Video

Video courtesy of Ilia Malinin’s official YouTube channel.

Early Life & Education

Ilia Malinin was born in Fairfax, Virginia, on December 2, 2004, to parents who knew exactly what elite figure skating costs and were not in a hurry to spend that on their son. Tatiana Malinina, born in Novosibirsk, Russia, in 1973, had moved to Uzbekistan as a teenager and become the inaugural Four Continents champion in 1999, the 1998–99 Grand Prix Final champion, and a ten-time Uzbek national champion. She placed eighth at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Roman Skorniakov, born in Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1976, also represented Uzbekistan and competed at both the 1998 and 2002 Olympics. The two trained together in Tashkent, married in January 2000, and had moved to Dale City, Virginia, in 1998 because the Tashkent practice facilities had deteriorated. Both retired in 2002 and became full-time coaches at SkateQuest in Reston, where they still coach today. Tatiana told NBC Sports in 2022 that they didn’t take young Ilia’s skating seriously at first: they brought him to the rink because that was where they worked, and he skated around because the rink was there.

The lineage went back further than two generations of Olympians. Malinin’s grandfather, Valery Malinin, competed for the Soviet Union and went on to coach for decades. His great-grandmother sold her wedding ring to buy Tatiana her first pair of skates, a story Ilia recounted on USA Today’s “Milan Magic” podcast in early 2026 and has cited as the reason he stays grateful for everything he has. The family last name, Malinin, is the masculine form of his mother’s surname, taken because his parents worried that “Skorniakov” would be too hard for Americans to pronounce. The name comes from malina, the Russian word for raspberry, and Malinin would later choreograph a signature aerial called the “raspberry twist” in his mother’s honor.

He didn’t expect to be a skater. He told People magazine in January 2026 that he had wanted to play soccer, but his parents didn’t have time to drive him to lessons, so the rink absorbed him by default. He landed his first quadruple jump at 13, after which his parents decided he was, in his mother’s word, “surprisingly good.” He picked the online gaming and social media handle “Lutzboy” as a nod to his mother, who was famous for her triple Lutz, and switched to “quadg0d” in late 2020 as inspiration for the jumps he was teaching himself during the pandemic. He competed for the Washington Figure Skating Club through his junior years, won the 2022 World Junior Championships in Tallinn at 17, and is currently studying as an exploratory studies major at George Mason University in Fairfax, the same Virginia county where the Board of Supervisors honored him with a formal resolution after his quad Axel.

Career Highlights and Milestones

The senior career split into two clear arcs: the first centered on the quad Axel, the second on stacking championship gold and refining the artistic component of his programs. Malinin missed the cut for the 2022 Beijing Olympic team after a silver medal at U.S. Nationals; the federation chose Jason Brown for the third spot. The omission shaped what came next. Two months after Yuzuru Hanyu attempted a quad Axel in Beijing and fell, Malinin began pursuing the same jump under the pole harness with his father holding the safety line. By the time he posted a clean practice landing on Instagram in May 2022, Tatiana was already convinced he could do it in competition. He landed it on September 14 in Lake Placid as the opening jump of his free skate, a “Euphoria” program choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne. He won by twenty points. American skater Adam Rippon called it “the craziest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do on the ice.”

The technical ceiling kept rising. At the 2023 World Championships in Saitama, Malinin’s senior Worlds debut, he won bronze and landed his quad Axel internationally. At the 2024 World Championships in Montreal he won his first world title with five quadruple jumps in his free skate, including the Axel. At the 2025 World Championships in Boston he became the first skater to land all six different quadruple jumps (toe loop, Salchow, loop, flip, Lutz, and Axel) in a single program, a kind of grand-slam achievement that had been theoretical until it wasn’t. By that point he was three-time U.S. national champion and twice over a world champion. He won the Grand Prix Final three years in a row, in 2023, 2024, and 2025, the last by 30 points.

The single most consequential program of his career, in retrospect, may be the December 2025 Grand Prix Final free skate in Nagoya. Skating to a Pixar-meets-Hollywood medley arranged by his choreographers, Malinin landed seven cleanly rotated quadruple jumps and a backflip (the ISU lifted its longstanding backflip ban for the 2024–25 season, and Malinin promptly added one to both his programs), scored a then-personal-best free skate, and combined for 333.15 across the two segments. Three weeks earlier he had set a senior world record at Skate Canada with a 228.97 free skate, breaking a number Nathan Chen had set in 2019. He went into the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games unbeaten in fourteen straight competitions, an active streak going back to December 2023.

Then he lost. After helping Team USA to gold in the team event with a 200.03 free skate (he ran a five-quad layout, swapped the quad Axel for a triple, and emphasized clean execution to lock the team result), he took a five-point lead into the men’s individual final on February 13, 2026. He fell twice in the free skate, struggled with the rotations on multiple jumps, and finished eighth. Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan won gold, becoming the first Olympic figure skating champion in his country’s history. Yuma Kagiyama of Japan took silver, Shun Sato bronze. In an Instagram post three days later titled “Fighting Invisible Battles,” Malinin spoke about the pressure and online hatred he had been navigating, describing himself as “overwhelmed” by the moment. Six weeks later, at the World Championships in Prague on March 28, 2026, he won his third consecutive world title with 329.40 points, beat the field by 22.73 points, and described it as “probably one of the easier world championships I’ve been to” because the Olympic pressure was finally gone. He did not attempt the quad Axel in Prague. He still won by a margin that would have placed him second to himself.

Selected Career Highlights

• 2017 U.S. juvenile (Boys) national title, his first national gold at age 12
• 2020 Skate America senior debut at 15 (5th place after unveiling two new quads learned during the pandemic)
• 2021 JGP France and 2021 JGP Linz golds, qualifying for Junior Grand Prix Final
• 2022 World Junior Championship gold in Tallinn (junior world record total of 276.11)
• 2022 U.S. Championships silver at 17 (just missed the Beijing Olympic team)
• 2022 U.S. International Classic in Lake Placid: first skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition (September 14, 2022)
• 2023 World Championships bronze (senior Worlds debut, Saitama)
• 2023 U.S. Championships gold (first of four straight national titles, 2023 to 2026)
• 2023 ISU Grand Prix Final gold (first of three straight, 2023 to 2025)
• 2024 World Championships gold in Montreal (first world title)
• 2025 World Championships gold in Boston: first skater to land all six quad jumps in a single program
• 2025 Skate Canada: world record free skate of 228.97 (October 2025)
• 2025 ISU Grand Prix Final gold in Nagoya: seven cleanly rotated quads in one program; combined 333.15
• 2026 U.S. Championships gold (4th consecutive senior national title)
• 2026 Olympic Winter Games team event gold (Milano Cortina, February 8, 2026)
• 2026 Olympic Winter Games men’s individual: 1st after SP, 8th overall after free skate (February 13, 2026)
• 2026 World Championships gold in Prague (3rd consecutive world title; March 28, 2026)

Major Recognition

• 2026 Olympic team event champion (Milano Cortina)
• 3× ISU World Champion (2024, 2025, 2026), 1× World bronze medalist (2023)
• 3× ISU Grand Prix Final champion (2023, 2024, 2025); 7× Grand Prix gold medalist
• 4× U.S. National Champion (2023, 2024, 2025, 2026)
• 2022 World Junior Champion
• World junior record holder, men’s free skate and combined total
• Senior world record holder, men’s free skate (228.97, 2025 Skate Canada)
• Time 100 Next List honoree (2022)
• Guinness World Records entry for first quadruple Axel in competition
• Fairfax County Board of Supervisors official resolution
• ISU Best Coach Award (2025) won by his parents Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, partly in recognition of their work coaching him

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Awards and Accolades

Career Stats & Records

SP = Short Program; FS = Free Skate. Asterisk (*) indicates a personal best or record set. Senior world record for men’s free skate (228.97) set at 2025 Skate Canada. Junior world record for combined total (276.11) set at 2022 World Junior Championships. Scores sourced from U.S. Figure Skating and ISU; slight variations may appear across protocol reporting.

Major Competition History

Net Worth, Income, & Lifestyle

Social Media & Online Presence

Fan communities on social media (unofficial)

NOTE: In addition to any official accounts listed above, many fan-run pages, clip accounts, and statistical tracker accounts exist across all platforms. These are not confirmed to be affiliated with Ilia Malinin. Links and usernames can change at any time. Always verify a social media handle through Malinin’s verified accounts before following, subscribing, or purchasing through any source claiming affiliation.

Trivia & Lesser-Known Facts

• His last name, Malinin, is the masculine form of his mother’s surname and is derived from malina, the Russian word for raspberry. He created an aerial choreographic move called the “raspberry twist” (a butterfly entrance into a single sideways twist) as a tribute to his mother and to that etymology.
• His first online handle was “Lutzboy,” chosen as a nod to his mother Tatiana, who was famous on the international circuit for her triple Lutz. He switched to “quadg0d” in late 2020 as a manifestation of the jumps he was teaching himself during the pandemic. He landed his first quadruple Axel in competition two years later.
• Both of his parents represented Uzbekistan at the Olympics, but neither was born there: his mother Tatiana was born in Novosibirsk, Russia, and his father Roman in Sverdlovsk, Russia. They moved to Tashkent, then to Virginia in 1998, married in 2000, and became American citizens. Tatiana was the first skater representing Uzbekistan to medal in an ISU Championship.
• He speaks Russian and English fluently and has occasionally given interviews in Russian.
• His Instagram post “Fighting Invisible Battles,” published three days after his eighth-place finish at the 2026 Olympic individual men’s event, became one of the most-discussed athlete mental-health statements of the 2026 Games. He later elaborated on the post in a long-form interview with Olympics.com host Nick McCarvel in front of the Milan Duomo.
• His parents Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov won the ISU Best Coach Award at the 2025 ISU Skating Awards in Boston. Both still coach him and run their full coaching practice at SkateQuest in Reston, Virginia.

Quotes

“It felt really good. When I’m practicing it, it’s pretty easy for me to figure out how to get the right timing and everything to have it be a good attempt. To do it in competition is a different story because you have nerves and pressure that can get in the way of that. So I have to treat it like I’m at home, and it feels pretty good.”

– Ilia Malinin, after landing the first quadruple Axel in competition history, U.S. Figure Skating press conference (September 2022)

“On the world’s biggest stage, those who appear the strongest may still be fighting invisible battles on the inside.”

– Ilia Malinin, Instagram post following his 8th-place finish in the men’s individual event at Milano Cortina 2026 (February 16, 2026)

“Medals don’t really define who you are.”

– Ilia Malinin, in an exclusive post-Olympics interview with Olympics.com (February 2026)

“I was definitely coming back to prove myself that [the Olympics] was a one-time thing, but now I realize this is much more than just skating. It’s being able to go and enjoy and have fun. Coming here I had no big expectations.”

– Ilia Malinin, after winning his third consecutive World title in Prague, ISU press conference (March 2026)

“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.”

– Ilia Malinin, USA Today’s “Milan Magic” podcast (January 2026)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: Who is Ilia Malinin?
A: Ilia Malinin is an American figure skater and three-time World champion (2024, 2025, 2026), known by the self-coined nickname “Quad God.” He is the only person in history to have landed a fully rotated quadruple Axel in competition. He won team event gold at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games.

Q: What is the quadruple Axel and why is it significant?
A: The Axel is the only figure skating jump entered while skating forward, which means a quad Axel requires four-and-a-half rotations in the air rather than four. Malinin became the first skater to land it in competition on September 14, 2022, at the U.S. International Classic in Lake Placid. He remains the only skater ever to land it cleanly in international competition.

Q: Why did Ilia Malinin finish 8th at the 2026 Olympics?
A: Malinin entered the men’s free skate on February 13, 2026, with a five-point lead after the short program, but fell twice and made several other errors during the program, dropping from first to eighth overall. He has spoken openly about the pressure of being the heavy gold-medal favorite and described the experience in an Instagram post titled “Fighting Invisible Battles.”

Q: Did Ilia Malinin win an Olympic gold medal in 2026?
A: Yes. He won gold in the figure skating team event on February 8, 2026, helping Team USA defeat Japan by one point with a 200.03 free skate. His individual men’s singles result was 8th.

Q: Who coaches Ilia Malinin?
A: His parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, both former Olympic figure skaters for Uzbekistan, are his primary coaches. They run their coaching practice at SkateQuest in Reston, Virginia.

Q: Where does Ilia Malinin go to college?
A: Malinin is enrolled at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as an exploratory studies major.

Q: How many quadruple jumps has Ilia Malinin landed in a single program?
A: Seven, set at the 2025 ISU Grand Prix Final in Nagoya, Japan, in December 2025. He is also the first skater to land all six different types of quadruple jumps (toe loop, Salchow, loop, flip, Lutz, Axel) in a single competition program, which he did at the 2025 World Championships in Boston.

Upcoming Projects / Season Outlook

• Stars on Ice 2026 Tour (U.S., spring 2026): Malinin is on the tour roster alongside Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, and several other Milano Cortina medalists. Tour dates and lineup are subject to change.
• 2026–27 ISU Grand Prix Series (assignments TBA): Malinin’s individual Grand Prix assignments for the 2026–27 season have not been announced as of press time. Senior assignments are typically published by the ISU in late spring or early summer.
• 2027 ISU World Figure Skating Championships (Beijing, March 2027): The next Worlds returns to the city of the 2022 Olympics. Malinin will be defending his title and will be a four-peat candidate, a feat last achieved by Hayes Jenkins (1953–56) and Scott Hamilton (1981–84).
• Quadruple Axel as ongoing program element (TBD): Malinin did not attempt the quad Axel at the 2026 Olympics or at the 2026 World Championships. Whether he reintroduces it as a regular element in 2026–27 will be an early-season indicator of his technical direction for the next four-year cycle.
• 2030 French Alps Olympic Winter Games (February 2030): Malinin will be 25 years old in early 2030. He has indicated, including in his post-Worlds remarks in Prague, that he intends to compete in the next quadrennial cycle.
• Endorsement portfolio expansion (ongoing): Forbes has reported that his existing deals with Coca-Cola, Samsung, Honda, Google, Xfinity, and Dick’s Sporting Goods include performance-incentive clauses tied to Olympic and Worlds results. Additional partnerships have been hinted at but not confirmed for public release.

Interviews & Features

• Olympics.com, “Ilia Malinin one-on-one: ‘They think we’re robots’ on the ice” (February 2026), an exclusive sit-down before the Milano Cortina individual event in which Malinin discussed building community among elite skaters and the human cost of the sport.
• Olympics.com, “Ilia Malinin breaks silence after eighth-place finish at Winter Olympics 2026: ‘Fighting invisible battles'” (February 2026), the post-Olympic mental-health statement that became one of the defining athlete moments of the Milano Cortina Games.
• NBC Sports, “Ilia Malinin three-peats at figure skating world championships in dominating Olympic rebound” (March 2026), the official recap of his redemption third world title in Prague.
• George Mason University, “Ilia Malinin wins his third consecutive world championship” (March 2026), his university’s profile of his Worlds win and his exploratory studies coursework.
• Heavy.com, “Ilia Malinin’s Parents & Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know” (February 2026), a family-focused profile of Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov as both parents and coaches at the 2026 Games.

Public Appearances, Games, & Events

• 2025 ISU World Figure Skating Championships (March 2025): Malinin won his second world title at TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts, becoming the first skater to land all six types of quadruple jumps in a single competition program.
• 2025 Skate Canada (October 2025): Set the senior world record for the men’s free skate (228.97) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, surpassing the mark Nathan Chen set in 2019.
• 2025 ISU Grand Prix Final (December 2025): Won his third consecutive Grand Prix Final at the Aichi Sky Expo in Nagoya, Japan, landing seven quadruple jumps in his free skate, a competition first.
• 2026 Olympic Winter Games (February 2026): Competed at the Milano Ice Skating Arena in Milano Cortina, Italy, helping Team USA win team-event gold and finishing 8th in the men’s individual event.
• 2026 ISU World Figure Skating Championships (March 2026): Won his third consecutive world title at the O2 Arena in Prague, Czechia, in front of more than 15,000 spectators, beating the field by 22.73 points.
• Stars on Ice 2026 Tour (April to May 2026): Touring multiple U.S. cities alongside other 2026 Olympians and Worlds medalists.