When Pressure Meets Perfection: The Quad God’s Golden Moment

With everything on the line and Japan breathing down their necks, Team USA turned to their secret weapon. Ilia Malinin delivered when it mattered most.

The Setup

The U.S. had a five-point lead over Japan after two days of competition. But the advantage dwindled to nothing when world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara won the pairs free skate and Kaori Sakamoto won the women’s free skate earlier Sunday night. The stage was set for a showdown that would define Olympic glory. All of it had left the U.S. and Japan tied for first, with 59 points, entering Sunday’s final discipline, which began after 10 p.m. local time. Everything came down to one man.

The Quad God Under Fire

Ilia Malinin finished 2nd behind Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama — a result that tightened the team gold race and shifted momentum back toward Japan. Malinin followed with 98.00 — nearly 12 points from his season’s best — collecting nine points for Team USA. The 21-year-old who calls himself the “Quad God” had stumbled in his Olympic debut. He became the first skater since 1998 to perform a backflip at the Games and the first to do so legally since 1976. But style points wouldn’t win gold. He needed redemption.

Crunch Time

The United States entered the final round of the team competition tied for first place with Japan at 59 points. It came down to Malinin and Japan’s Shun Sato, who were the final two skaters. The pressure was suffocating. If Malinin, the Fairfax, Virginia, native who was born for such a stage — his parents skated at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics — was nervous, it did not show as he bounded on his skates and pumped a fist on his way to the ice during his preskate introduction. This was his moment.

The Performance

Malinin opened the men’s free skate with a big quad flip, opted for a safer triple axel over his quad, and overcame a couple of mistakes along the way to finish with aplomb. The son of Olympic skaters Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov ended with back-to-back combos, a quad toe-triple flip and a quad salchow-triple axel, leaving a crowd full of American and Japanese fans roaring in approval. He needed to put both hands on the ice to steady himself after a shaky fall, but quickly upped the difficulty of his routine beyond anything his competitors could match by backflipping at center ice. Skating in the final segment of the Olympic figure skating team event, Ilia Malinin delivered a winning score of 200.03 points in the men’s free skate to close out Team USA’s night with a gold medal in Milan.

Golden Glory

Sato did everything he could to give Japan a chance. From his opening quad lutz to his finishing triple lutz, the Japanese star was nearly perfect, producing an easier but cleaner program than Malinin had earlier. He pumped his fist the moment his music ended, then had to wait to hear whether it was enough. It wasn’t. Malinin has earned his first career Olympic medal. It was the first medal handed out in figure skating at these Games, and marked the second consecutive Olympics in which the U.S. won the event. The Quad God had delivered when his country needed him most. Sometimes greatness isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being clutch.