Ilia Malinin rebounded from an eighth-place Olympic finish to post the world’s highest short program score in four years in his first competitive skate since the Milan Cortina Games.
Malinin, bidding to three-peat as world champion, landed a quadruple flip, triple Axel and quad Lutz-triple toe loop combination, finishing his program with a relieved smile and earning 111.29 points.
The Virginia native leads by 9.44 points — the largest men’s short program margin at worlds since 2019 — over Adam Siao Him Fa of France going into Saturday’s free skate in Prague, Czechia (live on Peacock).
“I was definitely coming back to prove myself that (the Olympics) was (a) one-time thing, but now I realize this is much more than just skating,” Malinin said, according to the International Skating Union. “It’s being able to go and enjoy and have fun. Coming here I had no big expectations.”
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Malinin won 14 competitions in a row from December 2023 through the Prevagen U.S. Championships this past January. Then in his Olympic debut in February, he led after the short program before a 15th-place free skate dropped him to eighth.
Malinin said he thinks about the Olympics a lot — mainly “the good points” — but tells himself that what happened is in the past and that he has to get back up and keep going. Not much has changed about him since the Games.
“Another version of me and another part of me kind of appeared out of nowhere (after the Olympics), and that’s just the person of not trying to put so much expectation on me and really just wanting to enjoy what I do and what I love,” he told media in Prague.
Men’s Short Program Results (Top 10):
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Ilia Malinin (United States): 111.29
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Adam Siao Him Fa (France): 101.85
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Aleksandr Selevko (Estonia): 96.49
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Shun Sato (Japan): 95.84
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Stephen Gogolev (Canada): 94.38
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Yuma Kagiyama (Japan): 93.80
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Andrew Torgashev (United States): 89.07
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Daniel Grassl (Italy): 88.53
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Lukas Britschgi (Switzerland): 88.30
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Jacob Sanchez (United States): 85.15
Aleksandr Selevko of Estonia, who was 16th at the Olympics, is in third place, seeking his country’s first world medal.
Yuma Kagiyama of Japan, the silver medalist at the last two Olympics, is in sixth place after slipping and falling on the takeoff of a planned triple Axel.
Olympic gold medalist Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan did not enter worlds. It is common for Olympic medalists to skip the post-Olympic worlds due to off-ice opportunities.
Americans Andrew Torgashev and Jacob Sanchez are in seventh and 10th place, respectively.
The top two Americans’ results must add up to no more than 13 to keep the maximum three men’s singles spots for the 2027 Worlds.
Torgashev, the two-time U.S. silver medalist, placed 21st and 22nd in previous worlds appearances, then was 12th at the Olympics.
Sanchez, fourth at nationals, is making his senior worlds debut, replacing two-time Olympian Jason Brown, who was withdrawn from the entry list last weekend.
Worlds continue later Thursday with the pairs’ free skate, live on Peacock.