- Virginia teenager caps stunning ascent with first world title
- Malinin beats Olympic silver medalist Kagiyama by 24 points
- Japan’s Kagiyama takes silver as Siao Him Fa earns bronze
Ilia Malinin, the Virginia teenager whose once-imaginable bounty of quadruple jumps has captivated the figure skating world during a rapid ascent to the top of the sport, won his first world championship with a history-making free skate on Saturday night at Montreal’s Bell Centre.
The American prodigy, skating to a crowd-pleasing score from Succession, drilled a quad axel, quad lutz, quad loop, quad salchow, another quad lutz in combination with a triple flip, a quad toe loop in combo with a triple toe, then added a triple lutz-triple axel combo to finish with a world-record score of 227.79.
