Ilia Malinin three-peats in world championships after disastrous Olympics

Ilia Malinin has three-peated.

The 21-year-old U.S. figure skater won his third straight world championship Saturday in Prague, scoring 329.40 points to win gold by a margin of 22.73 over Japan's Yuma Kagiyama. Shun Sato also secured Japan a bronze medal.

Malinin becomes the first skater to win three consecutive world titles since Nathan Chen did it from 2018-2021. The 21-year-old is also the youngest to win three championships since Russia's Alexei Yagudin in 2000, and he's the second-youngest American to claim three after Dick Button did it at the age of 20.

Malinin's triumph also serves as a redemption arc after being the gold-medal favorite in the Milan Olympics last month and finishing eighth. He landed five quads in the free skate as part of a routine that featured a lower degree of jump difficulty compared to his Olympic performance. Malinin also declined to attempt his trademark quad axel.

"My expectation was to leave the long program in one piece, and I definitely think that happened," he said after the victory.

When asked if he intentionally chose a safer routine, Malinin responded: "A better answer to that question is, this has been time for me to relax and enjoy the last competition of the season."

Malinin also enjoyed a return to his winning form after his 14-competition win streak, the longest stretch in men's skating in decades, stalled out in Milan.

"This was probably one of the easier world championships I've been to, just because of the amount (of) pressure I had at the Olympics. And going into here, I felt like it was almost no pressure at all," he said. "I completely blocked out all the expectations, all the pressure that people put on me and was really here to skate for myself and enjoy every moment of these world championships, and I think I did exactly that."

Malinin's success in the world championship could mean he's destined for further redemption at the next Winter Olympics. Every U.S. men's singles skater who's won three-plus world titles has also won an Olympic gold, including Button (1948, ‘52), Hayes Alan Jenkins (1956), David Jenkins (1960), Scott Hamilton (1984) and Chen (2022).

The French tandem of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron won the gold medal in the ice dance competition.

They posted a 230.81 score to easily win over Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who took silver in 211.52. The American couple of Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik won bronze with a score of 209.20.

The world title is a record-tying sixth for Cizeron with the other five coming when Gabriella Papadakis was his partner. Cizeron and Papadakis also won gold in ice dancing at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Cizeron took a break after those Olympics and formerly retired in December 2024 but quickly had the itch to compete again. Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry teamed up in March 2025 and the latter used to compete for Canada.

The chemistry came together quickly and the 31-year-old Cizeron and the 33-year-old Fournier Beaudry won the ice dance gold medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics last month.

And now they put together a memorable performance on the world stage.

"I think that having left the stage for a short time, you know how precious these moments are," Cizeron said after Saturday's victory. "These are moments that I particularly like, the moment when you have just finished and you can just take this mental image that goes by so quickly."

--Field Level Media