Silver this. Silver that. That’s the colour linked perennially and always to Yuma Kagiyama’s name. But that pile of shiny metal bits doesn’t come close to explaining what the world saw in the men’s free skate at the world figure skating championships in Prague on March 28. Kagiyama’s free skate was epic. Homeric. Classy. The […]
Yuma Kagiyama
Malinin: Crazy Good
How do you defeat this guy, this Ilia Malinin kid – still only 20 – who seems to have been hatched from another planet and dropped earthward? Malinin and his mop of tawny hair and an unearthly ability to rotate his body, won his second consecutive world figure skating championship title on Saturday at the […]
Ilia Malinin: A Win for the Ages
MONTREAL There was a moment in his free skate on a snowy night in Montreal when Ilia Malinin knew, despite everything weighing on his mind over the past couple of weeks, that “it was my time.” Time for him to deliver an explosive routine the likes few had ever seen. Time to put illness, and […]
Men’s Short Program
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 […]
Nathan Chen’s Epic Adventure
Nathan Chen is ever thus: calmer than a pool. And focused like a laser beam, although he doesn’t look it. He won his third consecutive world title with explosive point totals on Saturday. He had come to Stockholm, grateful to be there. He had shaken off his woolly lockdown curls, shrugged off a hiccup in […]