U.S. figure skating star Ilia Malinin romps to 2nd straight Skate America title

Ilia Malinin stood in the centre of the ice at Credit Union of Texas Event Center as stuffed animals thrown from the crowd fell around him, and raised his arms to both soak in the spotlight and almost sheepishly acknowledge the adulation.

The 18-year-old skating star performed a near-flawless free skate Saturday night in Allen, Texas, to easily defend his crown at Skate America, the opening event of the Grand Prix season.

Malinin landed four quads and never bobbled on any of his seven jump sequences, piling up a career-best 310.47 points to easily outdistance second-place Kevin Aymoz of France.

Aymoz delivered a crowd-pleasing program to finish with 279.09 points and take the silver medal, and Shun Sato of Japan scored 247.50 to round out the podium — two steps down from Malinin, but what felt like two dozen flights of stairs.

Toronto's Stephen Gogolev had 135.75 points to finish in 11th place in the 12-men event.

"I didn't think it was a flawless long program. There's a lot of things I can work on," said Malinin, who has been drilling on his artistry since last season, "but when I sit here and look at the score, I have no words for it."

In the pairs competition, Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel became the first German team to win a Grand Prix event since Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot when they scored 184.23 points to edge Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud of Canada.

Malinin chose to open with the triple axel, rather than the quad that he was the first to land in competition, and then threw down a quad lutz — the second-hardest jump behind the quad axel.

He added a triple loop before a quad salchow and another quad lutz, this time in sequence with a half loop and triple salchow that scored more than 20 points by itself.

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