If the 2026 Winter Olympics have one breakout star so far, America’s own Ilia Malinin is almost certainly it. The 21-year-old figure skater—who has earned the nickname “Quad God” for being the only athlete ever to land a quadruple axel during ...

Ilia Malinin is not like most figure skaters. Even when he makes mistakes, he is still so far ahead of the rest that he wins Olympic gold.

For at least a decade, the quadruple axel jump was figure skating’s white whale. “It’s been this unreachable thing, like the four-minute mile” once was, says Matthew Lind, a technical specialist for U.