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≡ ISU WORLD CHAMPS ≡
American skating star Ilia Malinin, still just 21, entered the 2025 ISU World Championships as the two-time defending champion. And despite his difficulties at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan, he dominated the field and won a third straight title in brilliant fashion on Saturday.
Competing at the O2 Arena in Prague (CZE), Malinin already had a big, 111.29 to 101.85 lead on second-place Adam Siao Him Fa (FRA) following the Short Program. As Malinin waited, Olympic silver winner Yuma Kagiyama (JPN) – sixth in the Short Program – mounted a charge with a brilliant Free Skate, scoring 212.87, no. 10 ever at the time and taking the lead at 306.67, a seasonal best.
Two skaters later, Olympic bronze winner Shun Sato (JPN) also performed superbly, scoring 192.70 – just behind his Olympic effort – and moved up to second behind Kagiyama at 288.54. Estonia’s Aleksandr Selevko – third after the Short Program – scored 173.93, suffering a fall, and dropped and Siao Him Fa also struggled, with a fall and scoring only 169.71 and dropping back.
That left Malinin in the same situation was in Milan: last skater, with a big lead coming in. But he met the moment, with a quad Flip, quad Lutz, another quad Lutz, a quad Toe Loop and quad Salchow and more, including his trademark back flip. He said later there was no need for his astonishing Quad Axel.
The result was a brilliant 218.11, the no. 7 Free Skate score in history – he has four of the seven – and a total of 329.40, the no. 6 score ever. Said the winner:
“I felt really relieved that the season is finally done after the long ups and downs for this whole season. I’m very glad to be here at the World Championships. It was a different change of mindset to come here. All I wanted to do was to skate for myself and enjoy every moment on the ice and just have fun out there. That’s exactly what I did.
“I think this was probably one of the easier World Championships I’ve been to, just because of the amount of pressure I had at the Olympics. Going here I felt like there was almost no pressure at all. I’ve just completely blocked out all the expectations, all the pressure that people put on me. I was really here just to skate for myself and enjoy every moment of these World Championships, and I think I did exactly that.”
He’s still just 21, with Kagiyama at 22, Sato is 22 and then there is Kazakh Mikhail Shaidorov, the Olympic champion, who is also just 21. Wow. Those four have won eight of nine medals in the last three Worlds!
Malinin won his third straight Worlds gold, matching fellow American Nathan Chen, in 2018-19-21 and 12 others before him. He’s the sixth American to win at least three in a row.
Kagiyama won his fifth silver in the last six championships (plus a bronze) and Sato won his first Worlds medal to go along with the Olympic bronze.
The other two Americans, Andrew Torgashev (249.41) and Jacob Sanchez (241.74) placed 10th and 12th overall.
Malinin also voiced some concern over the future of the sport and the changes being instituted by the International Skating Union:
“[T]hey want to change from seven jumps to six jumps. We have to set up our programs completely differently, and especially with last season, how they weren’t sure with how many jumps were going to be there.
“I personally had problems with having to go from six jumps to seven jumps, and that honestly caused me a lot of problems with my previous competitions.
“But in the end, I think that the ISU and everyone who is in charge of making these decisions should really listen to the athletes because to be honest, we’re the reason the ISU is blowing up and really here.
“And because without the skaters, the ISU would not be able to have all of us and this recognition. That’s what I think about it. I think the ISU should really reconsider all of these changes and really give an opportunity and a voice to all of us athletes to really come together and realize what’s better for the sport.”
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