ISU Grand Prix Final 2025: Ilia Malinin to attempt quad Axels in both programs – and “almost there” to reveal world’s first quintuple
Ilia Malinin has two major plans for the 2025 Grand Prix Final: land two quad Axels and play some arcades.
The USA figure skater is celebrating his 21st birthday in Nagoya, Japan with plenty of games and food tasting on the wish list. Given his chosen sport and that his birth date falls on 2 December, on-ice celebrations have become a birthday tradition too.
“It has probably been 10 years,” Malinin mused about the last time he celebrated a birthday without lacing up his skates. “Now it’s part of my life and it’s what I do. It’s my passion, so there’s always going to be a birthday practice or birthday competition.”
Like 2025, the last three years saw Malinin celebrate his birthday while training for the Grand Prix Final, two of which he won.
Now looking to get a three-peat in Nagoya, Malinin has spent the month since setting a world record at Skate Canada International revising his already technically dominant programs and taking them to the next level.
The 2025 Grand Prix Final will see the two-time world champion attempt a quad Axel in both the short and free programs. Malinin was the first and only to perform this jump in competition, in 2022, but has since taken it out of his programs.
In Nagoya, it is planned to be part of the opening quad Axel-triple toe loop combination in the short program since it would not count for points as a standalone jump in that segment. In the free, it is the second jump after the quad flip.
With two more program upgrades – a triple to a quad loop and a quad Lutz substituted into the triple Lutz-Euler-triple flip combo – Malinin’s free skate jump count now goes up to seven quads.
“That’s something I really want to try here,” Malinin said. “That’s my first competition with this layout, so I’m going to see how I feel and then get some feedback from there as I approach the Olympic Games.”
While his are the most technically difficult programs across the field, Malinin said he is still only at “85 per cent” of his capacity – with the full “120 per cent” timed for his Olympic debut at Milano Cortina 2026.
A quintuple – a jump that has never been landed in competition – could also be in Malinin’s program line-up for the Olympics. The skater made some attempts to jump a quintuple Salchow during training in Nagoya and while he did not land it, he is optimistic it will be ready soon.
“I felt really good, so I decided to maybe go for a ‘quinsal’,” he said of his training attempts. “It didn’t work out, but I know in the future that it’s almost there. I’m almost close to revealing it to the public.”
