Away he went, with his usual slick velocity. Every four years, I have to learn again what a “quad flip” is. Malinin swept himself up into one—an efficient, twisting spiral just above the surface of the ice. He looked good. But then, trying a quadruple axel—a maneuver once considered impossible by the sport’s aristocracy—something wobbled in his mechanics, and he made only one rotation. His left leg flailed a bit in the air. Another mistake came shortly after. Malinin stuck a double loop instead of a quadruple, groupings of four now evading him at every turn. “We don’t usually see Ilia make mistakes like this,” a commentator said. You could see Malinin sigh, trying to shake his nerves.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter