Will Ilia Malinin bring his quadruple Axel to Skate America?

It was early last spring that Rafael Arutyunyan, the longtime coach of Nathan Chen, met with Roman Skorniakov, who mentioned that his son, 17-year-old American Ilia Malinin, wanted to land a quadruple Axel, the lone four-revolution jump yet to be done cleanly by any figure skater in competition.

The 65-year-old Arutyunyan, who has worked with Malinin part-time, assured Skorniakov, a 1998 and 2002 Olympic skater for Uzbekistan, that Malinin’s triple Axel was so refined that he would eventually get that quad.

You think so? Skorniakov asked. I know so, Arutyunyan replied.

About a month later, Skorniakov relayed that Malinin had done it. The world found out in May, when U.S. Figure Skating posted video of him hitting the Axel at a camp.

Malinin officially went into the history books when he attempted it in competition for the first time last month, nailing it at his season debut in a lower-level event.

Even before that, Malinin was already the new leading man in U.S. figure skating, given the Olympic champion Chen and teammates Vincent Zhou and Jason Brown are on indefinite, perhaps permanent, breaks from competing.

Now, Malinin is the most talked-about active skater across all four disciplines heading into this weekend’s Skate America, the first top-level event of the season. He is favored to become the youngest man to win the annual competition that started in 1979.

SKATE AMERICA: Broadcast Schedule

“All the eyes being on me, it is putting a lot of pressure,” Malinin, who splits his days between Marshall High School and the SkateQuest rink in Virginia, said last Saturday.

Malinin said he didn’t know yet if he will attempt the quad Axel at Skate America. He is focused on “clean and consistent” programs with a “basic