Olympics-Malinin eyes quintuple jump post-Milano Cortina Games

By Lori Ewing

Jan 28 (Reuters) – Ilia Malinin has never been much for limits. In a sport defined by physics, the self-named “Quad God” keeps redrawing what is possible, spinning beyond the virtual edge of imagination — and landing there. 

Now, after becoming the first skater to cram seven quads into a single programme, including that once-mythical quadruple Axel, the American has hinted at an even more audacious leap: the sport’s first quintuple jump.

Not soon, he insists. Not with an Olympics on the horizon. Next month’s Milano Cortina Games remain sacred ground, a place for precision, not experiments.

But the mere suggestion — said almost casually, as if plotting a run-of-the-mill upgrade instead of a five‑revolution free fall from the heavens — sends a tremor through the figure skating world. 

“The most realistic bar is when my body starts to give up on me, so we’ll figure out when that is, but I’m sure at least one or two quints hopefully will be possible,” Malinin said at last month’s Grand Prix Final, where he crushed his own world record in the free programme thanks to his seven clean quads.

“(The quint) is pretty close,” he said, amid chatter he lands them in training. “It’s in the works. It’s there, but after the Olympics that’s when I want to give most of my attention to landing the quint for the public.”

Asked which jump he would choose to add a fifth revolution to, he reeled them all off.

“I’ll keep you guys on your feet,” he said laughing. “I want to push myself as far as I can. I want to find out who I truly am. I’m a perfectionist, so I want to improve everything – technique, creativity, artistry. I want to know if there are any limits in the world.”

LANDING A QUAD SEEMED LUDICROUS

A decade ago, the idea of a quint seemed ludicrous to some.

Canadian Kurt Browning, the first skater to land a ratified quad jump in competition – at the 1988 World Championships — joked in a 2014 interview that for a quint to be possible, a skater “wouldn’t have shoulders and hips.

“They’d just be like a string with skates on,” he told The Canadian Press. “Maybe there will be a sighting of a Sasquatch at the same time that there’s a sighting of a quint. And maybe it’ll be real and ratified by video somewhere.

“But I just don’t think the quint will ever be a consistent thing like it is the quad. There’s just too much gravity.”

Five-times Olympic ice dance medallist Scott Moir was similarly sceptical.

“Nobody ever thought anybody would run a four-minute mile, nobody ever thought anybody would run a 9.7 (seconds) in the 100 metres, you’d have to think that our kids’ kids might be doing quints,” he told The Canadian Press in 2014.

“But I think that’s a long way away. Watching someone do a quad is mind-boggling still for me.”

If the quint was once dismissed as fantasy, Malinin is the one skater who has made the impossible feel routine. The 21-year-old from Virginia has already dragged the sport into its next era, by mastering the quad Axel among other things.

He raised eyebrows with a video he posted on Instagram last month, of nonchalantly doing a quad Axel-quad Axel combination.

While three-times world champion Patrick Chan said Malinin has the perfect build for the quint, it goes beyond physicality. 

“He has the narrow hips, long legs, a lot of leverage, he’s got the big pendulum effect that might help,” the 35-year-old Canadian told Reuters.

“But I think it’s just his confidence. He’s willing to throw himself and try it, he’s not scared of the unknown. He’s just so malleable. He reminds me of little kids, he’s flopping around, he falls and pops right back up.”

MALININ TAILOR-MADE FOR FIRST QUINT

Three-times world champion Elvis Stojko, the first skater to land a quadruple jump in combination in 1991, has watched the sport evolve for decades, and believes it has been inching towards the quint for years.

“I had done quads on some days that I was like, ‘Man, if I had a little bit more speed, a little bit more snap, I can probably do five,'” Stojko said in an interview with Reuters.

He echoed Chan’s assessment that Malinin’s body is tailor-made for the first quint.

“In order to be consistent with the quads, he has the perfect body type, he’s very thin, Ilia has the body type, because he’s like a pencil,” the Canadian said. “It’s easier to rotate a pencil through the air than a fan.”

Malinin is the red-hot favourite to win gold on his Olympic debut. After setting the bar sky-high at such a young age, Chan suggested his challenge could be: what’s next?

“The best way is by doing what he knows best, more difficult jumps and more rotations in the air,” Chan said. 

“Alternatively, he could improve his performance, his maturity and his depth of movement. But the way the sport is judged, you’re getting way more points landing more difficult jumps than a beautifully choreographed programme.

“And I think Ilia would get more fulfilment in landing a quint, adding a new line of elements to the rule book – that’s pretty cool.”

While nobody has landed one in competition, the International Skating Union added quint jumps to the Scale of Values for the 2024/25 season, assigning base values to a quint toe loop, Salchow, loop, flip and Lutz, but not the Axel.

(Reporting by Lori Ewing; Editing by Ken Ferris)