MILAN — Ilia Malinin just did something that hasn’t been done at a 21st century Winter Olympics.
The ‘Quad God’ performed his first skate during the team event Saturday, Feb. 7 with the men’s short program, and he became the first skater since 1998 to perform a backflip at the Games, and the first since it was unbanned. Malinin closed his performance with the stunning move than wowed the crowd at the Milano Ice Skating Arena. However, Malinin finished second in the event with a score of 98.00 after Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama pulled off a stunning routine that received 108.67 points.
The United States still leads the team competition with 34 points after Malinin’s performance, which earned the U.S. nine points. Japan’s 10 points for Kagiyama’s first-place finish put the country in second overall with 33 points. Host Italy is in third with 28 points.
Malinin said performing the move made him realize the magnitude of the event.
‘It was fun,’ he said. ‘I mean, come on, the audience just roared, and they were just out of control. Really that just helped me feel the gratitude of the Olympic stage.’
The first executed backflip at the Winter Olympics occurred in the 1976 Games in Innsbruck, Austria by American skater Terry Kubicka. However, the International Skating Union banned it the following year as it deemed the move too dangerous.
It was done by French skater Surya Bonaly at the 1998 Winter Olympics, landing it on one blade, but the move was illegal and she received a deduction for it.
No one had attempted it in the Olympics since then, but hope was renewed when the ISU made the move legal in 2024, paving the way for Malinin to perform it when he made his Olympic debut. His execution of it made him the third ever person to perform it at the Winter Olympics, and first to legally to do so in 50 years.
Even though it was the typical sensational Malinin outing, it still made for a thunderous entrance to Olympics for the American prodigy.
‘I try to enjoy every single moment and be grateful for everything, because there’s a lot of unexpected things that can happen in life,’ Malinin said. ‘I’m taking everything to heart.’