Ilia Malinin, the “quadg0d,” seems heaven-sent for U.S. figure skating

When Ilia Malinin started skating, at age 6, the rink was basically a day care center for him.

His parents, Tatyana Malinina and Roman Skorniyakov, each a two-time figure skating Olympian for Uzbekistan, both were coaching, and it was both easier and less expensive to have their son with them after school at the SkateQuest facility in Reston, Virginia.

“At the beginning, we didn’t take it seriously,” Malinina said. “We just took him to where we were working, and he was skating there.”

That changed three years later.

With minimal preparation, skating just three times a week, Malinin qualified for the 2015 U.S. Championships in the juvenile division when he was just 9 years old. He finished ninth.

Suitably impressed, Malinin and Skorniyakov started having him skate under their tutelage five times a week. In 2016, just after his 11th birthday, he became national juvenile champion.

Many others soon would be as captivated as his parents by their son’s nascent talent. Even before he would win his first national medal as a novice, two step ups from juvenile but still two levels below that of senior national skaters, U.S. Figure Skating invited Malinin to attend the 2018 Grand Prix finals, senior and junior, so he could see firsthand what his future might look like.

“Ilia clearly had great skating skills and could easily rotate triple jumps (by then),” said Samuel Auxier, then the USFS president. “He also had strong coaching given his parents’ experience.

“Much of credit goes to (USFS high performance development director) Justin Dillon, who spotted Ilia very early. I was in a good position to support him.”

The view would get a little blurry over the next couple seasons, as injuries kept Malinin from competing at nationals in