Ilia Malinin leads Skate America 2026 short program in season debut

News — 14 November 2026

Ilia Malinin opened his 2026-27 season eight months after his last competition: at Saatva Skate America in Everett (Washington), the three-time world champion won Friday’s men’s short program on 13 November with 96.74 points and goes into Saturday’s free skate with a 5.45-point lead over Japan’s Sota Yamamoto (91.29).

A full-throttle comeback

In his first competition in eight months, Malinin landed the quadruple flip and the triple Axel, although he under-rotated the quad Lutz and could only tack a double toe loop onto it. He still posted the best technical score of the twelve-man field and pulled clear on the artistic side: his program components outscored Yamamoto’s by 4.73 points and Mexico’s Donovan Carrillo’s by 7.23 — Carrillo is third with 86.49. Those 96.74 points are the world’s sixth-best short-program score of the season through four of the six Grand Prix events.

The result comes after a turbulent end to last season: Malinin saw his 14-event win streak dating to 2023 snapped at the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games — from first after the short program to eighth overall — but he rebounded to win a third consecutive world title in March. “I want to forget about the Olympics, I don’t want to talk about that anymore. I just want to move on,” he said on Friday.

In the pairs’ short program, world champions Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin (Germany) lead in their season debut, just 0.86 ahead of the US pair Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov.

Cantata Memoria: a program with memory

Malinin premiered a brand-new short program: “Cantata Memoria”, set to music by Karl Jenkins and choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne, dedicated to the victims of the January 2025 Washington, D.C. aviation tragedy. The skater explained that this season he set out to “bring more emotions to my programs” and feel “more connected to the audience, to the music, to the program”. Saturday’s free skate will decide the title; the NHK Trophy in Japan comes next and, if all goes to plan, December’s Grand Prix Final, which Malinin has won at the last three editions.

The ice beneath the jumps

A Grand Prix demands competition ice that stays smooth, level and thermally stable for three days of skating. It is the same standard Napapiri applies since 1993 to every real-ice rink it designs, manufactures, rents and sells — mobile and permanent — for event organizers, municipalities and sports and leisure facilities worldwide. Quotation within 24 hours.

Sources

• NBC Sports: Ilia Malinin tops Saatva Skate America short program in season debut (14 November 2026).
• Olympics.com: Skate America 2026 — Ilia Malinin leads men’s short program in season debut (14 November 2026).
• ISU: official Skate America 2026 results (isuresults.com), retrieved 14 November 2026.

Cover photo: Ilia Malinin warming up before the men’s short program at Skate America 2022, 21 October 2022. Photo by FloweringDagwood, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: archive photo, not from the 2026 edition and not a Napapiri installation.