Like the plot of the movie “Succession,” Ilya Malinin’s winning routine in Saturday’s men’s singles competition at the World Figure Skating Championships had many twists and turns: six quadruple jumps, including a quadruple axle, a feat that involved 4 and a half spins in the air.
The proven fact that these elements were included in the theme song of the HBO series only intensified the drama of Malinin’s performance.
The atmospheric string music that begins the song played for about 30 seconds as Mr. Malinin, a 19-year-old student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, made a four-axle ax while wearing a dressing up resembling a classic tuxedo. Mr. Malinin, who grew up in Fairfax, is the only skater to have achieved such a jump in competition; he did it first in 2022
By the time of the piano riffs of the “Succession” theme, he had accomplished three more quads: a quadruple lutz, a quadruple loop, and a quadruple salchow. (His talent for quadruple jumps earned him the nickname Quad God.) He landed two more before the roughly four-minute routine ended.
Mr. Malinin began skating to the “Succession” theme last fall, but has not yet watched the show. “I don’t have an HBO subscription,” he said in an interview. “But if I get it, I’ll definitely watch it.”
The network’s programming has had an impact on his performances before: Last season, he performed a free skateboarding show set to music selections from “Euphoria.”
“I haven’t watched Euphoria either,” he said, “but I hear it’s a really good show.”
To create the free skate “Euphoria”, Malinin collaborated with choreographer Juris Razgulajevs. His Saturday performance, for which he received the highest rating ever without cost skating, was choreographed by choreographer Shae-Lynn Bourne.
Ms. Bourne selected the “Succession” theme partly since it had not yet been utilized in figure skating, a sport during which music selections are sometimes repeated, Malinin said.
“We were playing around with how to make the sound work in the figure skating program, to make the program work better and make it more comfortable to perform the elements cleanly,” he said. “We added some sound effects and changed everything to make the music work as it should in a figure skating show.”
Nicholas Britell, who created the “Succession” theme, said in an email that he was honored that Mr. Malinin selected the music for his skateboard. “It’s really exciting to see the score extend beyond the TV screen,” Mr. Britell said.
Malinin said he almost missed the last skating championships on account of a “minor injury” that kept him off the ice for the week leading as much as the competition. His competition total rating of 333.76 – greater than 24 points higher than that of second-place Yuma Kagiyama – was representative of the progress Malinin has made since entering the 2021 senior international skating competition.
“I never thought I would be able to achieve this amazing result in the free skate and break this crazy world record,” Malinin said, adding that learning to land a four-axle jump motivated him “to become an innovator and a game changer.”
His main coaches, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, are also his parents. They were each Olympic skaters representing Uzbekistan and drew on that have to show their son. “They tell me not to be so stressed before the competition and how to maximize my training so that it is effective,” Malinin said. He can be advised by Rafael Arutyunyan, the longtime coach of U.S. Olympic figure skaters Nathan Chen and Adam Rippon.
Since mastering the quadaxel, Mr. Malinin said he was curious about trying the quintuple jump, a maneuver that consists of 5 turns in the air and has never been performed in competition.
He said that in the coming months, Mr. Malinin planned to “spend time mentally preparing myself for the thought of trying” the fifth jump. “I like pushing the boundaries of physical abilities and the boundaries of this sport.”
