MONTREAL
Earlier this season, two-time defending men’s champion Shoma Uno despaired on how he could ever possibly defeat the crazily talented quad-at-demand Ilia Malinin, possibly ever again.
Malinin is not only the guy who landed the first quad Axel in history, but his jumping abilities seem limitless. In the weeks before the world championships, someone released a video of something beyond belief: Malinin landing a quad toe loop – quad Axel combo. It’s incomprehensible that Malinin landed a quad Axel combination by putting the most difficult jump at the end of the combo, rather than the beginning.
Malinin said he was doing it just for fun.
However, on Thursday afternoon, Uno found a hole in Malinin’s armour and defeated him by 1.75 points in the men’s short program. Uno leads the event with 107.72 points, – his best score of the year – with Yuma Kagiyama second at 106.35 and Malinin third at 105.97.
Malinin, the 19-year-old American, debated on whether or not he would even attend the world event, plagued by both illness and injury, he said. He won’t specify the injury. He cited boot problems as well.
“The last couple of weeks has been a challenge for me,” Malinin said. “I’m just glad I was able to come here and perform under pressure.”
Some days, Malinin would have to miss practices. So last week, he and his family talked it over. They decided that Malinin would come and try his best no matter how he felt.
On Thursday after his skate, Malinin said he felt better, and was buoyed by the wall of noise that greeted him when he came out to skate. “The vibe and aura of this competition is really helping me feel better, he said. “The adrenaline is helping a lot, too.”
Malinin realizes he did not skate his best. There were a few minor things here and some things he could have done a lot better. There wasn’t a lot of edge work between the elements. He did a quad toe loop and a very difficult quad Lutz –triple toe loop combo with GOE of 3.66 and 3.29. All three spins got level four, but not very high GOE. The step sequence came in at level three.
But Malinin, not at his best? He still broke 100.
Uno landed a quad flip that he struggled with in early practices and then a quad toe loop – triple toe loop. That quad flip? He got a crazy 4.56 GOE. Everything else he did earned a level four, with a combo spin getting 3.50 GOE. He was blessed with 60.49 tech marks and the highest components (47.23).
“Although my combination jump wasn’t the best one I could have done, my first jump received very high marks which helped me to get a very high score overall,” Uno said.
Kagiyama, skating to “Believe,” landed an exquisite quad Salchow worth 3.60 extra points in the judges’ eyes, and an equally deft quad toe loop – triple toe loop. Everything he did earned a level four, but his components were slightly lower than Uno’s. They tied on skating skills.
“When my name was called, all the pressure disappeared, and I felt so happy to be able to skate, especially because I was not able to skate for one year due to my injury,” Kagiyama said. He has been slowly making a comeback and the best is yet to come.
The top three men are far in front of the rest of the field, but Jason Brown, skating to “Adios” by Benjamin Clementine, showed his mastery of everything that is not a quad. He finished with 93.87 points, 13.85 points behind the leader, but fourth best.
Brown splits his time between doing shows and competing, novel for a figure skating but by February, he was almost ready to call it quits, overwhelmed. His friends and support system persuaded him to just try skating another week.
But his skate and the reception he got in Montreal energized him. (Brown always seems energized.)
“It’s so great to be out there,” Brown said. “Honestly, just stepping out on the ice and that reception from the crowd! It was so overwhelming in an incredible way. “ The crowd rumbled before Brown even began his routine.
Some newer faces were on his heels, with the amiable Lukas Britschgi of Switzerland only .46 back in fifth (and fighting a left knee injury) and the tall, elegant Italian Nikolaj Memola only .31 back of that.
Britschgi landed a quad toe loop- triple toe loop combo, but Memola crackled the airwaves with a difficult quad Lutz while skating to Rachmaninoff. He was one of only five men to try one. That Memola was so close on Brown’s heels was heart-warming.
“I look to Jason because that is the thing I want to reach,” Memola, 20, said. “Yes, I can do two quads, but can I skate like Jason? No. To me, that’s the real hard part. If you work real hard on your body, you can do the jump. But to jump after such a hard transition (Brown’s favourite thing), and everything so amazingly landed together, it is something not for everyone. I am not sure I can reach it, because he is one of a kind.”
Deniss Vasiljevs, a crowd favourite from Latvia, ended up eighth of 40 men without a quad while skating to “Hallelujah” a song written by Canadian Leonard Cohen. Vasiljevs is well aware that Cohen was from Montreal and he has seen the building with the large painting of Cohen on it.
French skater Adam Siao Him Fa, who defeated Malinin earlier this year, was expected to be a fourth top contender, but inexplicably the wheels came off. He two-footed a landing on a quad Lutz that was to be part of a quad-triple combo and was unable to do the second part, flipping out. He also fell on a quad toe loop. He sits 19th with 77.49, almost 30 points behind third place.
Siao Him Fa admitted it was difficult for him to face this fate right now. “I was ready,” he said. “I was never so well prepared. It is difficult to say what happened. I have to move on. “
There were others that fell further from grace. Boyjang Jin of China, the original quad king who attempted multiple quads in programs before anyone else did, completely propped. He finished 39th of 40 men, with a score of 58.53, sadly, 49.19 points behind the leader. He was visibly devastated.
He was one of 11 men who was to attempt two quads in the short program, and one of them was the deadly quad Lutz. And he intended to do it as part of a combination with a triple toe loop. He did only a double Lutz. His sole quad toe? A double toe loop, worth hardly any points. He was off balance on a triple Axel. It was a nightmare skate. His technical content was only 23.32 points. Uno had 60.49. Jin was in tears when he left the ice. Only the top 24 skaters advance to the free skate.
“I don’t even know what to say,” said coach Brian Orser. “I have no words at all.
“He’s been training amazing. Doing clean programs every single day, shorts, longs….I have to take time to reflect on this. I don’t even know I don’t even know.”
Orser said Jin had come to him after an indecisive period following an Olympic Games. He hadn’t skated in six months when he arrived in Toronto.
Gradually, Orser built up Jin’s abilities. Over a couple of years, he improved.
Three weeks ago, Jin returned to China for a festival that included a team event as well as an individual event.
Jin did a quad Lutz- triple toe loop in the short program and got about 100 points. “He’s been on his game.” Orser said.
Jin’s fate was not for lack of training, Orser said. “I can’t even get angry. If there was no training or bad training, then you get angry. But he’s had such good committed training.”
On the other hand, the constantly travel-challenged Roman Sadovsky had the skate of his life in the short program, scoring 84.20, landing a quad Salchow with GOE of 2.06. He sits in 11th place.
“I definitely had a lot of training behind me,” said Sadovsky, whose early season was hampered by injury, then a series of travel disruptions that prevented him from having any competitions in the first half of the season. He has been playing catch-up all season.
He has competed at only the national championships and Four Continents, without his full complement of tricks. While he did only a double Axel back then, in the world short program, he landed a triple Axel.
“It’s kind of weird that Four Continents was kind of a primer for me, a prep for this competition. I would not have had it that way, but I had no choice. Those were the cards I was dealt. “
He said he felt in the zone during the performance. “Every moment felt good,” he said. He was patient.
And for the first time in years, he was facing a large, noisy cheering audience.
“Seeing the recognition from thousands of people was a very validating moment,” Sadovsky said. The sound the audience made was “brushing my eardrums.”
His second favourite moment of the skate was the time when his name was called to skate.
Sadovsky’s woes weren’t over after the Canadian championships. Hours of flight delays from Calgary meant it took a day to get home. When he got home, he developed a sore throat and a full-blown flu. He tested negative for COVID. It didn’t give him a lot of time to prepare for Four Continents. But he had give solid weeks to prepare for Montreal.
And he did fly to Montreal. “Everyone was saying: ‘Are you really taking the risk?’ I did.”
In Canada, he could take his skates on the plane, too. “Everything was smooth,” he said. “Cross my fingers that everything will keep going that way.”
Canadian champion Wesley Chiu is 18th at his first world championship at home. He said he was “pretty satisfied,” after a little bobble on his quad toe loop – triple toe loop combination. He turned the triple to a double. Nerves. “The energy is crazy,” he said. After the bobble, he said he was able to settle into his feet and “give it 110 per cent the rest of the way.”
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