Ilia Malinin shows evolution from Quadg0d in season debut

(Screenshot from Peacock broadcast)

EVERETT, Washington – Ilia Malinin’s final movement put him on his knees. The music stopped, and Malinin held the position for some 15 seconds, his forever childlike face blank, his pale eyes fixed in the distance, his cheeks reddened by the emotional and physical effort of his short program at Saatva Skate America.

The stillness was his way of continuing the mood of the program, set to music that is a lamentation composed by Welshman Karl Jenkins to remember the 116 children and 28 adults killed in a 1966 mine disaster in Wales. It is a tone that the 21-year-old Malinin rarely has tried to express in a competitive skating program.

It underscored another point Malinin was making: as he began the four years leading to the next Winter Olympics, he was no longer constrained by acting the part of the hyperconfident super hero known as the Quadg0d, the skater who favored up-tempo, powerful music and program themes.

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