What makes 'Quad God' Ilia Malinin so good at landing the hardest jump in figure skating?

U.S. figure skater Ilia Malinin is no stranger to making history on the ice. The 21-year-old, who hails from Virginia, underlined his gold medal-clinching free skate on Sunday night with a backflip that he landed on one blade — also known as “the Bonaly flip,” named after French skater Surya Bonaly, who was the first to pull off the move at the 1998 Nagano Games, when it was still banned. 

On Sunday, Malinin became the first figure skater to legally execute the move at the Olympics — one that was done for the love of the game, since it didn’t earn him any technical points. 

But the skating revolutionary is better known for being the first person to successfully land one of the hardest jumps in figure skating — the quadruple axel — in competition in 2022. He was just 17 years old at the time.

The move is the only basic jump with a forward takeoff, and involves four and a half rotations in the air.

His knack for landing quad jumps has even earned him the nickname “Quad God,” which he’s embraced wholeheartedly by making it a part of his social media handles. 

"How is Ilia Malinin so good at quads? Easy. Talent is the first thing," sports writer Pj Kwong wrote in an email to CBC News.

"He is a natural jumper,” said Kwong, who is also a veteran figure skating coach. "Then we need to take into account the legacy of the jumpers who came before him who paved the way and threw down the gauntlet to inspire him to take on the impossible.” 

That includes Canada's own Kurt Browning, a legendary figure skater who himself made history by becoming the first person to successfully land a ratified quad jump in competition in 1988.(Quad jumps are a broad category that includes the quadruple axel.) Browning said the axel is known to be