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≡ ISU WORLD CHAMPS ≡
At the ISU World Championships in Prague (CZE), a crowd of 13,444 came out to the O2 Arena Thursday night to watch the men’s Short Program and the Pairs Free Skate. That meant American star Ilia Malinin, the two-time World Champion, and he started his effort for a third impressively.
He opened with a quad Flip, followed with a triple Axel and a quad Lutz and triple Toe Loop and, of course, included his patented backflip on the way to a lifetime best Short Program score of 111.29!
His prior best was 110.41 at the 2025 Worlds, and it’s the third-highest score ever, behind only the 113.97 by American Nathan Chen in 2022 and 111.82 by Yuzuru Hanyu (JPN) in 2020. Wow. He said afterwards:
“I got to the ice and was in this zone and let everything happen. I was definitely coming back to prove myself that it [his Olympic performance] was a one-time thing, but now I realize this is much more than just skating. It’s being able to go and enjoy and have fun.”
Malinin raced to a significant lead over 2024 Worlds bronze winner Adam Siao Him Fa (FRA: 101.85) and Estonia’s Aleksandr Selevko (96.49), with the Free Skate to come. Americans Andrew Torgashev (89.07) was seventh and Jacob Sanchez was 10th (85.15).
It’s worth remembering that Malinin also had a big lead in the Olympic men’s competition after the Short Program, but had trouble – including a couple of falls – in the Free Skate.
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In the Pairs Free Skate, Olympic bronze winners Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin (GER) had the lead at 79.78, just slightly up on Georgia’s Olympic silver winners Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava (79.45), with Canadians Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud in third (75.52).
Pereira and Michaud promptly took the lead in the Free Skate with a lifetime best of 140.57 and a total of 216.09, their first-ever score over 200 points! Metelkina and Berulava suffered a fall that marred an otherwise elegant program, but their 138.96 moved them into the lead at 218.41, and Georgia’s first-ever Worlds Pairs medal!
Hase and Volodin needed 138.64 to win, and they were sensational, rolling through their routine with just a minor error and scored 148.55 (no. 8 ever) and a total of 228.33, their best ever and the no. 7 score in history, for the gold.
The German stars completed their step-by-step move up the podium: third in 2024, silver last year and now the first Germans to win a Pairs gold since 2018.
U.S. national champions Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, unable to skate in Milan due to citizenship requirements for Efimova, scored just 0.08 points short of their seasonal best at 135.22 in the Free Skate (fifth best!), and 202.51 overall, finishing sixth.
Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman finished 12th at 179.60; Emily Chan and Spencer Howe had a difficult Free Skate (three falls) and ended at 169.91, in 16th.
The ISU Worlds continue on Friday with the Ice Dance Rhythm Dance and the Women’s Free Skate. U.S. coverage is offered on NBC’s Peacock streaming service and USA Network.
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