Ilia Malinin rocketed to stardom four years after his 2022 U.S. Championships breakout. He now rules men’s figure skating with an Olympic gold medal and three World Championship titles. Fans worldwide love his “Quad God” label and gravity-defying quadruple jumps. But the spotlight brings mounting pressure. “I think that’s something that everyone forgets when we’re out on the ice and performing for an audience: They think we’re robots or animatronics,” he reflected in December 2025. Two months later at the Winter Games, Malinin slipped in a career low, yet he bounced back with grit that leaves his coach both impressed and concerned.

Rafael Arutyunyan, the coach behind Nathan Chen’s “Quad King” reign, also refined the jumps that crowned Malinin the “Quad God.” Despite Ilia’s career pinnacle, the 70-year-old Armenian-American icon worries about the 21-year-old.

“He’s (Ilia Malinin) already been through thick and thin, but there’s still the heat, and not everyone can handle that,” Arutyunyan told Sports.ru. “It’s only just begun to blow—literally a season or two ago. That’s not a long time yet, even though he may think he’s seen it all.

“Sometimes it happens literally overnight. When success comes, random people suddenly appear around you with their own interests. And they will start telling you lies, which you might believe and lead you in the wrong direction.”

Rafael Arutyunyan joined Ilia Malinin’s team in 2021 as a part-time consultant. He guided him through the 2026 Olympics, U.S. team event gold, and World titles in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Malinin’s parents skipped the junior title rush and focused on a solid jumping base for long-term wins. Smart call on his growing body, no quick fixes demanded.

His first junior season brought zero Grand Prix medals. He placed 16th at the 2020 Junior Worlds as Mozalev took gold and Gumennik bronze. Coaches kept it steady. It resulted in four straight peak seasons. Ilia skips gym marathons and heavy cardio but lands seven quads. Warm-ups dazzle with handstands or soccer dribbles, with Roman Skornyakov always ready with the ball.

The Hall of Fame coach further added, “I love and respect him very much, even though he’s 20, and I’m almost 70. And I wish him to go through this with dignity, to find the right people who will tell him the truth, even if it’s not always pleasant. I hope he takes it not as an insult, but as a call to action.”

Arutyunyan’s words come after Ilia Malinin somewhat brushed aside his Olympic disappointment and surged forward almost effortlessly to his third consecutive World Championships gold medal. It has definitely seen Malinin’s popularity skyrocket yet again, completing what many are calling a “redemption arc”, even though some don’t agree with that term.

That was thanks to both a personal best performance in the short program and an exceptional free skate, where he stunned the crowd with his never-ending catalogue of jumps. It meant that he joined Nathan Chen in third place, putting him one behind Scott Hamilton and Hayes Jenkins’ record of four consecutive World Championships titles.

But even that hasn’t assuaged Arutyunyan’s concerns because he believes the toughest part of Ilia Malinin’s career is yet to come.

“The next four years—if he decides to continue skating—will be completely different,” Arutyunyan asserted. “And I can imagine how difficult they’ll be, but he can’t quite. But that’s what youth is all about: you think you’ve got it all figured out. If they’d realized what lay ahead, they’d probably have said, ‘No, thanks, I’m done.’ But they’re throwing themselves into it—that’s the beauty of youth.”

Yet, it feels like Ilia has learned from his experience at the 2026 Milan Olympics, using it to his advantage at the 2026 World Championships to help retain his title.

Ilia Malinin reflects on his World Championship performance

The 21-year-old had walked into Milan as the bona fide favourite for the Olympic gold, having won an incredible fourteen consecutive competitions on the trot. That included two consecutive World Championships, and after an impressive short program, it was all set for Ilia Malinin. His score of 108.16 ensured he was in first place heading into the free skate, and then it all fell apart.

Quite literally, in fact, Malinin fell twice and proceeded to free-fall down the table, falling all the way to eighth place by the end of his program. It marked a shocking performance, prompting many to question whether he could perform at the highest level again. But Ilia Malinin brushed aside those questions with arguably his most dominant performance on the rink in years.

“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 here, I felt like it was almost no pressure at all,” Malinin told Olympics.com.

“I’ve just completely blocked out all the expectations, all the pressure that people put on me, and I was really here just to skate for myself and enjoy every moment of these world championships, and I think I did exactly that.”

It marked the return of a freer Ilia Malinin than the world had seen at the Winter Olympics, and a pressure-free one, which likely allowed him to put up that performance. However, whether that version of Malinin can survive the spotlight that now follows him everywhere remains to be seen. Because, as his coach warned, the real test isn’t the ice. It’s everything that comes with the fame that now surrounds him.