Figure skating\u2019s \u2018quad god\u2019 takes aim at a third straight US national title starting on Saturday, but for the first time as the incumbent world champion<\/p>\n
No matter how you look at it, Ilia Malinin<\/a> is already one of the most technically accomplished men\u2019s figure skaters of all time. From his history-making<\/a> quad axel, to his personal best scores \u2013 almost three points higher in the free skate than previous record holder Nathan Chen<\/a> \u2013 when the 20-year-old reigning world champion heads to the US figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas, this week, there\u2019s little doubt that he\u2019ll collect yet a third straight national title on the road to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.<\/p>\n He\u2019s skating to music by rapper NF<\/a> and rock band Falling in Reverse, and fans won\u2019t just see the American skater complete a now-expected array of quad jumps, and his signature Raspberry Twist, (a move taken from acrobatics), he\u2019s also included a newly sanctioned backflip<\/a>. It\u2019s all part of an underlying ambition to, \u201cHelp the new, more modern generation of people come and see what skating is,\u201d he said to me this week. Given the mind-blowing fact he\u2019s been working on a quint (an eye watering five rotations in the air) as a \u201cside-project\u201d, if there\u2019s one athlete that can bring a Biles-like level of fandom to a sport well past its heyday, it\u2019s Malinin.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Figure skating\u2019s \u2018quad god\u2019 takes aim at a third straight US national title starting on Saturday, but for the first time as the incumbent world champion No matter how you look at it, Ilia Malinin is already one of the most technically accomplished men\u2019s figure skaters of all time. From his history-making quad axel, to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}