Ilia

Ilia Malinin‘s quest for Olympic figure skating gold might not be so easy after all. The same goes for his American team.

Yuma Kagiyama landed a pair of near-perfect quads, one in combination with a triple toe loop, and the Japanese star scored 108.67 points for his short program Saturday night. That topped Malinin in the segment — he was second with 98.00 — and gave his team 33 points, just one behind the defending champion U.S. at the midway juncture of the three-day competition. 

While he waited for his score, his Team USA colleagues rallied behind him, waving and covering him with the American flag.

“I just felt excited to be here. Come on, this is the Olympics. You’re talking like this is a bad thing,” said Malinin, the two-time reigning world champion who is unbeaten in his last 14 completed competitions stretching back more than two years.

“It’s just so awesome to be here and be a part of this team,” Malinin said. “It’s honestly a life achievement.”

Italy was third in the team event with 28 points, Canada fourth with 27 and Georgia fifth with 25.

Only the top five advanced after the short program, and the Canadians squeaked through thanks to Stephen Gogolev’s personal-best 92.99 score. Kevin Aymoz was unable to match him for France, leaving his team one point below the cut line.

The second half of the team event began later Saturday night with the free dance, where world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates were back for the U.S. They won the rhythm dance on Friday, hours before the opening ceremony, giving the Americans the max of 10 points and plenty of momentum to begin the multi-discipline event.

Now, it’s the Japanese with the momentum.

“I didn’t feel the pressure and I didn’t feel nervous today,” Kagiyama said. “I’m very happy our score is so close to the USA.”

Before making his Olympic debut, Malinin had stalked through the tunnels inside Milano Ice Skating Arena, wearing a black tank top that read “Quad God,” the nickname reflective of the way he performs those other-worldly four-revolution jumps.

The name came about when he tried changing his Instagram handle.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I landed a quad? Quad God, there it is, okay, let’s put it in,'” he told CBS News in an interview last week. “And from there everyone’s like, ‘Why’d you name yourself Quad God? You only have one quad.” And I’m like, ‘Well, now that I think about it, maybe I should try to land all of them to get the Quad God status.'”

The 21-year-old wunderkind did not attempt the quad axel — the 4 1/2-revolution jump only he has ever landed in competition — but did a shaky version of the triple instead. He had started with a brilliant opening quad flip and finished his program with a quad lutz-triple toe loop, getting bonus points for the combination because it came in the second half of the program.

But when his score was read, Malinin seemed almost stunned that Kagiyama had beaten him — and by the margin.

“That’s only 50% of my full potential here,” Malinin said.

Malinan, whose parents were Olympic figure skaters for Uzbekistan and whose grandfather was a figure skater for the USSR, started skating at 6.

He won gold at both the 2024 and 2025 ISU Figure Skating World Championships.

Kagiyama opened with a quad toe-triple toe combination, landed a quad salchow and finished his short program with a peerless triple axel. And unlike Malinin, when Kagiyama’s score was read, he jumped out of his seat with clenched fists raised high.

“I always receive good motivation from Ilia because he is one of the skaters who created this figure skating moment,” Kagiyama said. “He’s a good jumper, and he can do quads, so I always think that I want to catch him.”

The Americans have been on a mission ever since the 2022 Beijing Games, where their Olympic triumph was overshadowed by a Russian doping controversy. The ensuing investigation held their gold medals in limbo for more than two years, until Chock and Bates were part of the squad that finally received them in a ceremony during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Japan has long been considered their biggest rivals. And they have lived up to those expectations, getting short programs by Kaori Sakamoto and pairs world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara to go with Kagiyama’s triumph Saturday night.