Skate of the art Teenager who made a mockery of sport's technical limits

Ilia Malinin’s star-making, record-shattering free skate to win the men’s singles at last week’s world figure skating championships in Montreal has registered shockwaves through the sport and beyond.

- Bryan Armen Graham

The flaxen-haired American teenager delivered a mesmerising performance set to music from the TV show Succession that was immediately hailed as the greatest athletic display in the history of figure skating. Performing last in the field of 24 competitors, Malinin became the second person ever to land six quadruple jumps in a single programme and the first to do it with a quad axel, the heart-stopping four-and-a-half-revolution jump that has proven beyond the reach of the sport’s most ambitious talents.

Propelled by Nicholas Britell’s moody eight-chord motif from Succession, the lithe 19-year-old made the unthinkable look elementary as he coolly launched one point-gobbling quad after another in a monochrome, tuxedo-inspired costume, showing the effortless power, form and fearlessness that have become his calling cards in a mere two seasons at the senior level.

While Saturday’s network broadcast on NBC drew a modest 1.56m US television viewers up against March Madness, it has gone viral in the days since, hoovering up millions of views across social media platforms with glowing write-ups everywhere from the New York Times and Good Morning America to the music blog Stereogum and the celebrity news site Just Jared. “I am so honoured that Ilia skated to selections from my music,” Britell told the Guardian. “It is really exciting to see the score transcend beyond the TV screen.”

The quadruple axel is figure skating’s most difficult element because skaters face forward while entering the jump, requiring them to complete an additional half-revolution. It has been landed only eight times in competition, all of them by Malinin, since he first pulled it off at the US Classic two years ago when he was 17.