Ilia Malinin’s voice echoed over the O2 Arena in Prague as he began to skate Saturday in search of his third consecutive world championship title.
He mouthed along to the first line from his opening position.
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
While the music and his spoken-word accompaniment have been part of his free skate all season, the words seemed to hold a different meaning this time. As the crowd anxiously looked on as if collectively holding their breath throughout the duration of his free skate, his words sounded almost like self-affirmations during his return to the ice six weeks after his disastrous Olympic appearance. They served as a reminder to him of what he had been through and was attempting to overcome.
“The lost is in the unknown, embrace the storm.”
“The past is not a chain, but a thread, pull it and it might lead you home.”
“Begin where light no longer reaches, where no path has yet been made.”
He seemed to take his own words to heart as he forged his post-Olympic path throughout the free skate. With a performance with five quadruple jumps and his signature backflip, he shook his fists and roared in jubilation at its completion. He earned a 218.11 for a final total score of 329.40, securing him a statement-making world title. A 22-point gap separated him from runner-up Yuma Kagiyama and the rest of the field.
Ilia Malinin’s FULL free skate for a HISTORIC three-peat at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships. pic.twitter.com/NHqpJnAcn5
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) March 28, 2026
“My expectation was to leave the long program in one piece, and I think that happened,” Malinin said moments later.
It’s been a triumphant return to the ice for Malinin this week. On Thursday, he competed for the first time since his disappointment in Milan. While he had seemed confident in practice and more than capable of landing his jumps and signature elements, no one — including Malinin — knew how he would fare.
But in his two-minute, 49-second short program, which included a quadruple flip, a triple axel and a quadruple lutz-triple toe loop combination, the self-professed “Quad God” proved to the world — and himself — that he was very much back as the sport’s most dominant skater. A wide smile filled his face at the end of the program, making his joy and palpable relief clear to all watching. His 111.29 score marked a new personal best in the segment.
“I was definitely coming back to prove myself that [the Olympic performance] was a one-time thing, but now I realize this is much more than just skating,” Malinin said afterward. “It’s being able to go and enjoy and have fun.”
Malinin, 21, arrived in Milan last month as perhaps the most dominant athlete competing in any sport. The two-time reigning world and three-time reigning national champion hadn’t lost a competition of any kind since 2023 and was as much of a sure thing as can exist in sports.
While it was his debut Olympic appearance, it seemed as if it would be his coronation as the sport’s latest king and further propel his burgeoning case as the greatest of all time. With a quadruple axel in his arsenal — the only skater in history to ever land it in competition — and a barrage of endorsements and media attention, the stage was set for Malinin to have his long-awaited moment in the spotlight.
Malinin was adamant in interviews, including with ESPN shortly before the Games, that he was treating the Olympics just “like any other competition.” His parents and coaches, former Olympians Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, believed that would allow him to just focus on his skating and not get caught up in the external noise and expectations.
But the reality is, the Olympics aren’t like any other competition. As many athletes, including 1984 gold medalist Scott Hamilton, have explained, there is nothing else quite like the Olympics. From the global media onslaught to living in the athletes village with thousands of athletes from across sports to the crippling pressure of something that happens only every four years, no other event can properly prepare someone.
“It’s just so different than anything else and anything you could ever expect,” Hamilton told ESPN this week.
Editor’s Picks
2 Related
Malinin learned that hard truth in real time, in front of a stunned arena and millions who watched around the world.
After a shaky — by his standards — short program in the team event, resulting in a second-place finish in the segment, Malinin responded with a dominant performance in the free skate, helping lead the United States to gold. The experience, many hoped, would have helped prepare him for the start of the men’s competition, which started just two days later.
Malinin held a five-point lead after the short program, and a gold medal appeared to be all but certain. His historic free skate program contained a record-breaking seven quadruple jumps and he had received scores throughout the season that no one else was capable of. But during that free skate, with him taking the ice as the last skater of the night, the unthinkable happened.
The typically unflappable and uber-confident Malinin fell twice in an error-riddled program and dropped to a shocking eighth place. His dream was destroyed in four heartbreaking minutes. When his program was over, he appeared stunned and then buried his head in his hands. Malinin instantly realized the mistake in his previous approach to the Olympics.
“I thought that all I needed to do was go out there and trust the process that I’ve always been doing with every competition,” Malinin told reporters moments later. “But of course it’s not like any other competition. It’s the Olympics. It was really just something that overwhelmed me, and I just felt like I had no control.”
But while other athletes facing such devastation might have immediately gone home and into hiding, Malinin did the opposite. He graciously congratulated Mikhail Shaidorov, the surprise gold medalist and pragmatically answered questions from dozens of reporters despite his own obvious frustration. In the following days, he cheered on his peers in the pairs and women’s competitions, proudly wore his gold medal from the team competition to various media appearances and was routinely spotted in the practice rink.
The day after the free skate, Malinin was at Winter House — Team USA’s official hospitality location for its athletes — and Hamilton found himself with a rare quiet moment alongside him as the pair waited for pizza. Hamilton didn’t know if Malinin wanted any advice or insight, and wasn’t going to offer any unsolicited, but was surprised when Malinin shared his one remaining goal for his time in Milan.
“We were talking, and he looks at me and he goes, ‘Man, I hope I get invited to do the [Olympics-ending exhibition] gala,'” Hamilton told ESPN. “I mean, the most dominant male skater in the world, who had won the last 14 straight [competitions], is hoping he gets invited to the Olympic gala. That shows how humble he is, right? He just wanted to get back out there and show everybody how great he is and can be.”
Malinin was in fact invited and did just that. And after earning a standing ovation from the crowd, Malinin left no doubt about what was next.
“My next goal is to have a redemption skate at the world championships,” he said.
While many top skaters, including Shaidorov and women’s champion Alysa Liu, opted to skip the world championships — as so many frequently do following the Olympics — Malinin knew the competition would give him one final opportunity to finish the season on his terms.
On Saturday, Malinin did that — and then some. While it didn’t match his season’s best scores in the free skate, nor for total score, his final total of 329.40 was over 37 points higher than Shaidorov’s gold medal-winning total.
Ilia Malinin teased a potential quintuple axel for future competitions. Image Photo Agency/Getty ImagesIt’s impossible to predict what the future holds for Malinin, but he has made it clear he’s nowhere near done with figure skating.
Now having achieved the elusive three-peat on the world stage, and having become the youngest to do so since 2000, Malinin will remain the favorite at every competition he enters next season. While he didn’t manage to execute his famed quad axel on Olympic ice, his skills and jumps remain in a league of their own, and he has even teased some quintuple jumps in recent months.
“If anyone will be able to pull off a quint, it’s Ilia,” Hamilton said. “I think there’s still a lot he has left to show.”
For the past several years, there has been a group chat for all of the American figure skaters who have won Olympic gold. There was considerable conversation after Malinin’s free skate, but, per Hamilton, it was 93-year-old Hayes Alan Jenkins, who stood atop the podium in 1956, who made perhaps the most important observation about all of the six American men in the chat who had claimed the top spot on the podium.
“[Jenkins] said, ‘We all had our first Olympics and he didn’t,” Hamilton said. “[Malinin] didn’t get that chance [in 2022]. There’s really only one way to prepare for the Olympics and that’s to compete in one.”
Malinin controversially missed out on making the American team for Beijing despite finishing in second place at the national championships. He was ultimately named an alternate, and he was caught on camera alluding to the snub — “I told them they should have sent me to Beijing, then I wouldn’t have skated like that,” he said — just seconds after leaving the ice in Milan.
But Malinin does have that experience under his belt now. And while anything can happen in a four-year span, Malinin should have another chance for Olympic glory in 2030. With more motivation than ever, and having won over potentially even more fans with his grace in defeat, Malinin could become an even bigger star, and cement an even greater legacy, because of what happened in Milan.
“He’s still so young and with so much potential, it’s going to be really fun to see how he rides this out and how he grows stronger, grows deeper and continues to experience everything,” Hamilton said. “He could win eight national titles, seven world titles and an Olympic gold if he skates through 2030, and he could go another four years after that if he wanted to. He’s definitely in a position to establish himself as the GOAT.”
And now, with the Olympics firmly behind him, Malinin seems ready to prove the best is yet to come.
After the podium ceremony Saturday, he took a victory lap with his fellow medalists and stopped on the ice to record a video for the International Skating Union’s social media accounts. He ended his message with a simple plea to the fans.
“Please stay tuned,” he said directly into the camera with a smile. “There’s more coming next season. Don’t go anywhere.”
Ilia Malinin rebounds from Olympics with third world championship Top World News Today.
Hence then, the article about ilia malinin rebounds from olympics with third world championship was published today ( ) and is available on TOP world News today ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Ilia Malinin rebounds from Olympics with third world championship )
Also on site :
- Peter Alexander is leaving NBC after years of being passed over for top anchor jobs: source
- The Japanese Concept a Psychologist Swears by To Find Purpose in Life
- Pharmacy workers, others ratify four-year contract with Kaiser