BOSTON (Reuters) – Defending champion Ilia Malinin pulled off the best performance of his career to take the lead after a stunning short program at the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston on Thursday.
American Malinin, undefeated this season, performed a historic six quadruple jumps in his free skate routine in winning last year, the first man to do so with a quad Axel.
Malinin began with a quad flip and made a combination of quad Lutz triple toe loops look easy to achieve a personal best and fourth highest ever short program score of 110.41 score, leading Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama (107.09) ahead of Saturday’s free skate.
“I don’t even know how to feel right now. I felt really nervous – more than usual before but when the music came on I just went into a flow state and it just went from there,” Malinin said.
Kagiyama, runner-up last year and three-times silver medallist, is expected to be Malinin’s biggest challenger for gold. Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov, this year’s Four Continents winner, is in third place on 94.77.
Malinin clearly loved every moment on the ice, at one stage singing along with Running by NF, as the volume at TD Garden only grew louder, with the 20-year-old delighting the crowd with his signature “raspberry twist”.
Kagiyama had the unenviable task of following Malinin, but skating to “The Sound of Silence” he put in a performance which also brought the crowd to their feet.
Kevin Aymoz of France moved safely though in fourth place, and was in tears after a performance which brought a standing ovation from the Boston crowd and ended with a season’s best score of 93.63.
His compatriot Adam Siao Him Fa shook off a fall at the start of his routine to recover with an excellent triple Axel, and is down in ninth place with 87.22.
The Frenchman did, however, finish 19th in last year’s short program, before coming back to take the bronze medal.
The medal-deciding pairs free skate is scheduled for later on Thursday, with 2023 world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan leading Italy’s Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii after Wednesday’s short program.
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes, editing by Ed Osmond)
