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No matter how you look at it, Ilia Malinin is already one of the most technically accomplished men’s figure skaters of all time. From his history-making quad axel, to his personal best scores – almost three points higher in the free skate than previous record holder Nathan Chen – when the 20-year-old reigning world champion heads to the US figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas, this week, there’s little doubt that he’ll collect yet a third straight national title on the road to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.

He’s skating to music by rapper NF and rock band Falling in Reverse, and fans won’t just see the American skater complete a now-expected array of quad jumps, and his signature Raspberry Twist, (a move taken from acrobatics), he’s also included a newly sanctioned backflip. It’s all part of an underlying ambition to, “Help the new, more modern generation of people come and see what skating is,” he said to me this week. Given the mind-blowing fact he’s been working on a quint (an eye watering five rotations in the air) as a “side-project”, if there’s one athlete that can bring a Biles-like level of fandom to a sport well past its heyday, it’s Malinin.

But when speaking of his meteoric ascent, Malinin is more cautious.

“I don’t think I’m really that far away from everyone,” he said to me earlier this week. “I think that I’m just a little over – and there’s a lot of things that I have to work on.”

Despite a clean sweep of gold medals this season, including at the Grand Prix Final in France last month, he’s not, he said, a “fan” of the way he’s been skating. This may not be entirely unfounded – he’s made several uncharacteristic mistakes, and some of his jumps have been getting scored as under rotated.

“I think because of winning the world championships I have a little more pressure on myself, and maybe that kind of affects how I’ve been skating these past months,” he said, admitting that the switch from the “teenage phenom”, to incumbent world champion hasn’t been easy.

“It’s kind of the process of being an athlete at that top level. There’s going to be that day, that week, that month, that time, where things just won’t work out for you,” he said. “I just have to work, and train, and really put in all the effort to take out all of these mistakes and weaknesses, so that I have nothing to be afraid of when it comes to the big competitions.”

Watching Malinin skate, it’s hard to imagine him being afraid of anything. The way he launches himself into the air, high enough to easily rotate four times before landing on one blade, it’s like he was born to figure skate. And, as the son of two Olympic figure skaters, one could argue that he was. But after a somewhat “late” start to the sport – his parents didn’t let him start until he was six and a half – no matter how easy he makes it look, he’s worked hard for his “quad god” honorific.

When he first burst onto the scene, winning the world junior title and taking the US national silver medal in 2022, Malinin’s technical prowess was already clear. But figure skating is an artistic sport. Performance, choreography, and flow over the ice (termed skating skills), are all awarded points. At first, some commented that the young skater lacked these qualities, a critique that was often reflected by lower scores for those components.

Three seasons later, he’s still the only skater to land all six quad jumps in competition, and his now-viral performance to the soundtrack of the hit show, Succession, last season has proven Malinin is plenty capable of giving the rousing, entertaining performances that draw crowds and garner high scores.

“I was always looking up to how the other skaters skated and trying to copy what they did and their style,” he said, explaining this development. “I decided to try to be my own skater, and to just do what I feel like works best in terms of choreography, skating artistry, and to bring something new to skating.”

Bringing something new includes landing the once-impossible quintuple jump. “I’ve done it a few times, and I would say they’re pretty OK for being the first few attempts,” he said.

When asked if we can expect to see one in competition, he said probably not soon. It’s a confidence game. With the added pressure of competition – the adrenaline, the exhaustion of a four-minute-long routine in front of judges and an expectant crowd – something as technically demanding as a jump on the ice has to be perfect 18 or 19 times out of 20 in practice to be worth risking in competition. Any hesitation, and that’s when things go wrong. “It takes a little more mental preparation just to figure out how I can go for it without risking a huge injury,” he said.

Innovation and stretching the limits of the sport is a tactic he sees as vital, not only to elevate his scores, but to return figure skating to its glory days of the 90s and 2000s, when viewership in the US was at an all-time high.

“I think the general idea is to make [my skating] unique, so that people who have no idea what skating is, or what any of the technical elements are, or the artistry, can say, ‘oh, this guy did a backflip on the ice, it’s really entertaining,’ or, ‘wow, this guy went parallel to the ice in the air.’ So, it kind of brings back that whole excitement of figure skating.”

Just like the tricks, Malinin sees his music choices as integral to bringing figure skating to a new generation. “It’s kind of cool to bring different people – maybe hip-hop or rock enjoyers – who don’t know much about skating, and to really just try to inform them about how cool the sport is.”

Malinin credits choreographer and 2003 world champion, Shae-Lynn Bourne, with his boundary-pushing programs. “She really understands how I move, and what looks the best on me. And in terms of music, we kind of trade information and to see what fits, what she thinks can make a good program, and what I could manage as a skater,” he said.

Outside of competition, Malinin is a college student, attending George Mason University in his home state of Virginia, playing video games and spending time with friends with whom he can be more than, “Ilia the world champion.”

He’s also putting his goal of growing the sport’s audiences into action, headlining a series of shows titled Gold on Ice. “For us, the skaters, when we do shows it helps us perform a lot better at competition,” he said. Although there’s been a decline in recent years, for decades skating shows performed to sold-out arenas. While still a nascent venture, Gold on Ice represents yet another strategy to help usher in a golden age of the sport he loves.

This week, Malinin is looking to put out two solid programs at nationals, free of the small errors that have plagued him all season. With fan favorite Jason Brown withdrawing due to an equipment change that stalled his training, and few challengers on the horizon, all eyes will be on quad god Malinin.