Ilia Malinin had the highlight performance in Olympic sports this past weekend, winning figure skating’s Skate Canada in historically dominant fashion:
- Second-highest total score ever in international competition (333.81 points, just behind Nathan Chen’s 335.30 from 2019)
- Highest international free skate score ever (228.97, breaking Malinin’s own record)
- Largest margin of victory in top-level international competition in any discipline (76.6 points), according to Skatingscores.com.
Malinin did so without his full arsenal of jumps, a sign that he is still working his way up to peak later this season. He omitted the quadruple Axel – potentially his highest-scoring single jump and one that only he has ever landed clean in competition.
He is expected to include it in his programs later this season with the goal of becoming the first person to cleanly land all six different types of quad jumps in one program.
Malinin won his 12th consecutive individual competition, a streak that began in December 2023 and included the last two World Championships.
He goes into his next event – expected to be the Grand Prix Final next month – looking to tie Chen’s streak of 13 consecutive individual wins, the longest in men’s singles skating in decades. Chen stepped away from competition after winning 2022 Olympic gold, paving the way for the Malinin era.
While Malinin’s top rivals weren’t entered in Skate Canada, they are expected to be at the Grand Prix Final in what will likely be a mini preview of the Milan Cortina Olympic competition. Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, the 2022 Olympic silver medalist, competes on the Grand Prix two of the next three weeks bidding to earn a spot in the six-man Final.
Mone Chiba, Isabeau Levito lead women’s podium
In the Skate Canada women’s event, 2025 World bronze medalist Mone Chiba of Japan won to consolidate her status as an Olympic medal threat.
Isabeau Levito, the 2024 World silver medalist, was second in another boost to her chances of making the three-woman U.S. Olympic team. The team will be chosen by a committee after the Prevagen U.S. Championships in January, taking into consideration not just results at nationals but also skaters’ recent bodies of work.
The three Americans who made last season’s world team – two-time reigning U.S. champion Amber Glenn, reigning world champion Alysa Liu and Levito — have combined for the seven highest scores among U.S. women this season, with Levito achieving four of them in her four starts.
Sarah Everhardt and Bradie Tennell — who were third and fourth at last season’s nationals behind Glenn and Liu (Levito was out due to injury) — placed seventh and fourth, respectively, at Skate Canada.
Canada’s top Olympic medal hopes won the Skate Canada titles in pairs (2024 World champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps) and ice dance (four-time world medalists Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier).
U.S. skeleton team named for early World Cups
The U.S. skeleton roster for the first half of the World Cup season is led by Mystique Ro and Austin Florian, who combined to win the world title last March in the mixed team event that makes its Olympic debut in 2026. Ro also won silver at worlds in the women’s event.
Katie Uhlaender, a five-time Olympian, did not make the team for the early World Cups through weekend selection races. Uhlaender is not out of the running to make the Olympic team, but will now have to focus on making podiums in lower-level races and/or getting on the World Cup team for races later this season.
The Olympic team of up to three men and three women will be named in January and based off world rankings.
Uhlaender and curler John Shuster are both bidding to tie the U.S. record of six Winter Olympic appearances across all sports held by Nordic combined skier Todd Lodwick (1994-2014).
New York City Marathon sees closest finish in race history
In summer sports, distance-running power Kenya swept the men’s and women’s elite podiums at the New York City Marathon for the first time.
In the men’s race, Benson Kipruto held off Alexander Mutiso by three hundredths of a second after 26.2 miles of racing in the closest finish in race history.
Hellen Obiri won her second New York City title by a more comfortable 16 seconds over Sharon Lokedi. Obiri ran 2:19:51 to shatter the women’s course record set in 2003.
American Susannah Scaroni won her third title in the women’s wheelchair division. Swiss Marcel Hug earned his record-extending seventh title in the men’s wheelchair race.
New York City marked the last major marathon of 2025.
