Ilia Malinin does a back flip during the Free Skating Team event on day two of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 8 in Milan, Italy.(Tang Xinyu/VCG via Getty Images)
Ilia Malinin, a 21-year-old U.S. figure skater, led Team USA to a gold medal in the team figure skating competition at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Sunday night, delivering a jaw-dropping performance punctuated by a backflip that he landed on one skate.
It was the first Olympic gold medal for Malinin, who was controversially left off the U.S. team at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. He now has a shot at one more. He competed in the men’s short program on Tuesday — in which he claimed the top spot — and will compete on Friday in the men’s free skate.
Here’s what to know about the self-proclaimed “Quad God.”
His parents are former Olympic figure skaters
Malinin is the son of two Russian-born Olympic figure skaters, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, who competed for Uzbekistan at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.
They later moved to Virginia, where Ilia was born in 2004. He started skating at age 6.
“I thought I was going to be a soccer player,” he told People magazine. “But my parents didn’t have time to take me to soccer lessons — so skating kind of took over.”
His backflip left Novak Djokovic in awe
(Jean Catuffe via Getty Images)
Djokovic, the 24-time Grand Slam men’s singles tennis champion, was in the crowd during Sunday’s team skating competition in Milan. Malinin’s backflip left the crowd, including Djokovic, in awe.
The Serbian tennis star rose to his feet with his eyes and mouth wide open in disbelief.
Later, Malinin told reporters that he heard about Djokovic’s viral reaction.
“I’ve heard from everyone that after I landed my backflip he was standing there, hands on his head, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s incredible,’” Malinin said. “That’s a once-in-a-lifetime moment seeing a famous tennis player watching my performance. I’m absolutely blown away.”
He’s impressing skating greats too
Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic champion and longtime skating analyst, told the New York Times that he’s never seen anything like Malinin.
“You’re like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’” Hamilton said. “He does these ninja flips and rotational things, things that didn’t exist before. He’s so different than anything we’ve ever seen. It’s like he’s come from 50 years in the future to show us how far the sport has come.”
“Seeing what Ilia has done in the last three years has been mind-boggling,” Kristi Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic champion, told the Associated Press. “We never thought we would be alive to see a quad axel performed and landed in competition, and here comes Ilia, just whipping it off like it’s nothing. Pretty amazing. Just so many factors go into creating this perfect world to do what he’s done.”
The Beijing snub fueled him
(James Lang/Imagn Images via Reuters)
In 2022, Team USA decided not to take Malinin, then 17, to Beijing despite his second-place finish at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, opting for 27-year-old Jason Brown instead.
Malinin hasn’t lost a national title since. He has won gold at the last three Grand Prix Finals and taken the past two world titles.
He came up with the ‘Quad God’ nickname himself
Malinin told CBS News that he came up with the name 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,’” Malinin said. “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.’”
At the Grand Prix Finals this past December, he became the first person ever to land seven quadruple jumps.
