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Eric Canha-USA TODAY Sports Oct 22, 2022; Norwood, Massachusetts, USA; Winners in the Men’s Program receive their medals (from left right) Kao Miura (JPN) with silver, Ilia Malinin (USA) with gold and Junhwan Cha (KOR) with bronze at Tenley E. Albright Performance Center.
AP
11:36 JST, October 24, 2022
Ilia Malinin wasn’t sure whether he would unveil his quad axel, the hardest jump in figure skating that only he had landed in competition, after a fourth-place short program left him playing catchup at Skate America.
Not only did he try it, the 17-year-old American phenom landed it nearly perfectly.
Eric Canha-USA TODAY Sports Oct 22, 2022; Norwood, Massachusetts, USA; Ilia Malinin (USA) performs in the men’s free program at Tenley E. Albright Performance Center.
Malinin’s brilliant quad axel, along with four more quads packed into a dynamic free skate Saturday night, was enough to lift him past Kao Miura and to the top step of the podium in his senior Grand Prix debut. Malinin finished on 280.37 points, more than seven clear of Miura and well ahead of third-place Cha Jun-hwan of South Korea.
Eric Canha-USA TODAY Sports Oct 22, 2022; Norwood, Massachusetts, USA; Junhwan Cha (KOR) performs in the men’s free program at Tenley E. Albright Performance Center.
“This morning I wasn’t really sure if I would attempt it or not,” Malinin said, “but I think it came over my mind, ‘Everyone is watching. I have to go for this.’ So I went for it, and I landed it, and I was in shock. The whole building was screaming.”
In the pairs competition, Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier scored 201.39 points to win Skate America for the second time in three years. The Americans were followed by the Canadian duos of Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps, who scored 197.89, and Kelly Ann Laurin and Loucas Ethier, who were a distant third with 156.94 points.
“You have to start somewhere and for us it’s here,” Knierim said, “and we’re going to continue to grow and build.”
American ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates along with Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, the women’s world champion, took the lead after their opening performances. The medals for those events will be decided Sunday.
Malinin landed the first quad axel at a lower-level event in Lake Placid, New York, but he was noncommittal when he was asked about bringing it out at Skate America. A shaky short program may have convinced him to give it a go, and he not only landed it but did so with nearly perfect grade-of-execution marks.
He wasn’t done, either.
Malinin followed with a quad toe loop, a quad lutz, a quad salchow and another quad lutz, done in combination with a triple salchow on which he finally fell. But with an almost sheepish smile, Malinin got back up and reeled off a triple flip-triple toe loop and a triple lutz-triple axel that earned him a standing ovation from the sellout crowd.
Miura, who like Malinin is just 17 years old, fell on his opening quad loop and had a negative grade-of-execution on his triple axel, which may have cost him the top step of the podium. He finished with 273.19 points.
Eric Canha-USA TODAY Sports Oct 22, 2022; Norwood, Massachusetts, USA; Kao Miura (JPN) performs in the men’s free program at Tenley E. Albright Performance Center.
In the pairs event, Knierim and Frazier opened well with their signature triple twist, and their landed a clean triple toe loop-double toe loop combination. But things got a little squirrely when Knierim fell on their throw triple loop, and a side-by-side triple salchow turned into a double salchow, dragging down the base value of their program.
