‘Quad God’ Ilia Malinin stuns in Winter Olympic team performance

MILAN, Metropolitan City of Milan — Ilia Malinin of the U.S. was poised to decide the team figure skating medals at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Saturday. His performance did not disappoint.

Malinin, who went into his first-ever Olympic performance as the gold-medal favorite, stunned judges with the vast majority of his performance. The 21-year-old skater recovered masterfully from a fall midway through his performance, pulling off his signature quad-loop into triple-axel, which no one else in the world has been able to pull off.

Judges awarded Malinin’s performance 200.03 points, which commentators of the performance said was a “magic number” for Olympic skaters. Japan skater Shun Sato, 22, had never scored over 200. Despite having a fantastic performance, that didn’t change on Saturday as judges awarded him a 194.86, leading to a gold medal for the United States.

The U.S. and Japan were both sitting on 59 points after seven of the eight programs in the three-day competition. Amber Glenn finished behind Japanese star Kaori Sakamoto and Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia in the women’s free skate on Sunday night, leaving the defending champion Americans tied with their biggest rivals with only the men’s free skate still to go.

Japan got a surprising lift on Saturday night when Yuma Kagiyama upset the heavily favored Malinin in the short program, giving his team the maximum of 10 points. But the Japanese decided to swap Kagiyama out for the free skate for Sato, who finished behind his countryman at their national championships in December.

But the U.S. was always going to give Malinin the opportunity to be its closer. The two-time reigning world champion was mediocre only by his standards in his short program. But Malinin’s real strength comes in the free skate, where there are seven jumping passes and his incredible leaping ability gives him a tremendous advantage.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.