Ilia Malinin Headlines US Figure Skating Olympics Men's Team 2026

Ilia Malinin's chase for Olympic gold is officially on.

Malinin headlined the United States men's figure skating team for the 2026 Milano Cortina Games, which was announced Sunday at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, Missouri. He was joined by Andrew Torgashev and Maxim Naumov as the three American competitors in the men's singles field.

As Jordan Mendoza and Rachel G Bowers of USA Today noted, the selection process weighed "focusing on the athlete's body of work over the past two seasons." 

That made Malinin a "roster lock," although the other two spots were very much up for grabs.

All eyes will be on Malinin in Italy, as the "Quad God" has what Mendoza and Bowers described as "the greatest array of jumps any figure skater in history has ever possessed."

Never was that more apparent than last month's Grand Prix Final when the first skater to land a quad Axel completed seven quadruple jumps in a single long program.

Malinin also has plenty of individual momentum considering he just captured his fourth consecutive U.S. title with a first-place score of 324.88 overall. He won both segments of the competition even though he took a more conservative approach in the free skate than his nickname would indicate.

Part of that approach was due to a recent boot change and foot discomfort, as Talia Barrington of NBC Olympics noted, but he still cruised to a victory even with fewer quad jumps that initially planned.

"Around nationals is when I typically break in new skates and new boots," Malinin said. "Being as these nationals were closer because of the Olympics, I didn't have a lot of time to get comfortable with them, so it was still kind of in the process where, you know, sometimes they can be good, other days they can be really uncontrollable. So, I decided to play it safe here, and also to kind of save my energy preparing for the Olympic Games."

Torgashev and Naumov rounded out the top three and will once again have a chance to compete against the winner at the Olympics.

Ultimately, though, it is Malinin against the field heading into the 2026 Games.

If he can deliver on those expectations, he will bring back gold to the United States.