Ilia Malinin’s near-flawless performance at Skate Canada solidifies his Olympic favorite status

SASKATOON, Canada (AP) – U.S. figure skater Ilia Malinin broke the world record for the free skate in winning Skate Canada with ease on Sunday, keeping his two-year unbeaten streak intact and underscoring his status as favorite to win Olympic gold at the Milano-Cortina Games.

The 20-year-old from Fairfax, Virginia, landed six quads along with a triple axel during a sublime free skate, set to music from the French supernatural thriller “Les Bal des Folles,” to finish with a personal-best 333.81 points. That left the two-time and reigning world champion 76.6 points clear of second-place Aleksandr Selevko, an absurd margin in figure skating’s elite events.

Malinin’s free-skate score of 228.97 surpassed the previous record under the current scoring system of 224.92, set by Olympic champion Nathan Chen at the 2019 Grand Prix Final, when the American set the overall record with 335.30.

Selevko, who is from Estonian, finished second with 257.21 points Sunday. Kao Miura of Japan took bronze with 253.69 points.

In ice dance, Canadian world silver medalists Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier won their sixth consecutive Skate Canada title, earning 202.89 points. Allison Reed and Saulius Ambrulevicius of Lithuania were second with 200.92, while Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha leapfrogged the U.S. team of Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko to give the home nation a second medal.

Gilles and Poirier, considered the biggest rivals to American dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates at the Olympics in February, made a couple of big mistakes during their free dance Sunday for a total score well off their personal best.

Malinin has not lost since November 2023, when he finished second at the Grand Prix de France. The three-time U.S. champion’s streak of perfection includes the past two world titles and championships at the past two Grand Prix Finals.

He will be favored to win the Grand Prix Final again in December in Nagoya, Japan.

Those events are all just building blocks for Malinin ahead of the Olympics, though, where he is the overwhelming favorite to follow Chen’s gold medal from four years ago with his own. Malinin just missed qualifying for the American team for the Beijing Games, in part because of his age at the time, though some believe U.S. Figure Skating erred in that decision.

The son of Olympic skaters Roman Skorniakov and Tatiana Malinina, Malinin has gone on to become the dominant force in figure skating during this quadrennial. His ability to land quads with ease gives him a huge advantage, and he hasn’t even put the quad axel – a 4 1/2-revolution jump that only he has ever landed in competition – into his program yet.

He opened his free skate Sunday with a quad flip, then landed the triple axel, before a quad lutz and quad loop. Malinin landed another quad lutz into a triple flip, a quad toe loop-triple toe loop combination, and he finished with a triple salchow-triple axel that left the crowd inside the Sasktel Centre in what seemed to be equal parts awe and admiration.

It certainly drained all the drama out of who would stand atop the podium.

The 24-year-old Selevko earned his first Grand Prix medal, a silver. Miura, a former Grand Prix winner, turned things around from a disappointing 10th-place finish at the Grand Prix de France with a bronze medal.

Skate Canada is the third of six events in the Grand Prix series. The NHK Trophy is next weekend in Japan, followed by Skate America in Lake Placid, New York. The Finlandia Trophy is the final chance to qualify for the Grand Prix Final.