An injury had slowed him down in the lead-up to the recent 2024 World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal, but George Mason University’s Ilia Malinin wasn’t to be deterred.
The 19-year-old part-time student left no doubt about who will be the likely favorite in the men’s singles competition at the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy, with a dominant world championship performance that included a world record-setting score of 227.79 in the free program.
In doing so, Malinin cemented himself as the man to beat in the figure skating field.
“I was surprised at how well I skated,” said Malinin, a Vienna, Virginia, resident and 2023 graduate of George C. Marshall High School. “I wasn’t sure if I could skate to my best because I’d been fighting through an injury. It was a lot of pressure because I knew it could be the best skate of my life or it could go terribly wrong.”
Considered a rising star in the sport in past years, Malinin successfully executed a record six quad jumps, including his signature quadruple axel jump that ranks as the sport’s most difficult in competition.
All quad jumps have four revolutions, except for the quad axel, which has four and a half revolutions. Malinin is the only person to have ever successfully performed a quad axel in competition, having first done so in 2022.
“I was kind of in shock,” he recalled. “The whole season, you’re working your way to get to that point. Then you get to that critical point where you could either skate your way on or off the medal stand. It felt like a relief.”
Malinin’s first world championship didn’t exactly go unnoticed by the Mason community.
“Six quads in a single performance?” asked Tim Groseclose, an economics professor within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the holder of the Adam Smith Chair at the Mercatus Center, who knows a little something about the sport thanks to a daughter who skated. “He’s basically the Michael Jordan of figure skating—not just the best in the world, but probably will be the world’s best for quite some time … and he’s an econ student at Mason!”
Malinin is looking ahead to the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston in March 2025, with the Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, Italy to follow in February 2026.
In the meantime, however, he still has plenty to keep him busy in his limited free time.
Mindful of a career after his skating days are over, Malinin said he began his collegiate academic pursuits at Mason because it offers a great education near his home and his nearby training rink in Reston.
It doesn’t hurt either that a number of his close friends from high school are currently Mason students.
But being the best in the world means practicing anywhere from four to six hours daily, six times per week under the watchful eye of his parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, the two former Uzbekistan Olympic skaters who also coach their son. Malinin’s grandfather, Valery Malinin, is a former Soviet Olympic skater currently coaching in Russia.
“When I first started skating [at age 7], it was more for fun,” Malinin said. “I was around 13 when I realized that I could skate for more than just fun.”
But that means it’s imperative Malinin make the most every minute of each day, so he often brings his laptop along for use at the rink during breaks to keep up with the online introductory economics class he’s taking this semester.
Last semester, he took a class in Mason’s School of Dance within the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Although he’s yet to declare his major, Malinin hopes to eventually study civil engineering, with an eye on design or architecture.
“Hope I meet Ilia someday,” Groseclose said. “And I hope even more he takes one of my classes.”