Ilia Malinin Doesn’t Have Time for a Girlfriend. He’s Making Quad Axel History (Exclusive)

For years, elite figure skaters were on a quest to nail the most difficult jump in their sport: the quadruple axel, which requires someone to spin four and a half times in the air in less than one second before alighting again on the razor’s edge of their skate.

While it’s technically possible, no champion had managed to land one in competition.

And then one night in 2022, on a nearly empty rink in Lake Placid, N.Y., 17-year-old Ilia Malinin pulled it off at the U.S. International Figure Skating Classic.

“It’s rare in our sport for something to completely shock and awe, and the quad axel does that,” says two-time Olympic skater and NBC commentator Johnny Weir. “Ilia is the figure skating version of the first man on the moon.”

Now the 21-year-old sensation — nicknamed the “Quad God” for on-ice feats that also include an unprecedented seven quadruple jumps in a single skate — is seen as America’s best shot at a gold medal in the sport at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Italy in February.

That victory would elevate Malinin to a bona fide legend and help the Northern Virginia native and videogaming fanatic, who has embraced stardom with the “Quadg0d” handle online, fulfill his dream of attracting new fans to the sport.

“No matter how nervous I’ll be,” explains Malinin on a recent morning during a break from training, “I can just trust everything I do, all my practice and muscle memory, and go out there and deliver.”

It’s hardly surprising that Malinin emerged as one of the world’s most talked-about skaters.

The sport is a family affair: His parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, who coach him, are two-time Olympians who competed for Uzbekistan. His grandfather Valery Malinin is a coach in Russia too, and used to bring young Malinin to the rink while babysitting.

Even Malinin’s sister Elli, 11, is a nationally ranked junior skater.

“I thought I was going to be a soccer player,” he admits, “but my parents didn’t have time to take me to soccer lessons — so skating kind of took over.”

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He first hit the ice at age 6, and by 13 he landed his first quad jump. That’s when, he recalls, his parents “realized I was surprisingly good.”

Three years later he was regularly executing quads on the junior circuit, competing in the world championship in 2020, as he worked his way toward nailing the hardest kind of quad — the axel.

At the adult level he went on to win four back-to-back national championships and dominated the last two world championships.

After his dominant performance at the most recent national championships, earlier this month, he said: “I just came into this competition just to see what happens out there and I impressed myself, I didn’t know I could skate that good.”

Competing in Japan last month, he set a record with the number of quadruple jumps. It’s an achievement he’s particularly proud of (and he’s already teasing an attempt at quintuple jumps).

“I knew I was going to make history,” he tells PEOPLE, “and after landing the seventh one, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I just did it.’ ”

In that same program, Malinin landed another of his unprecedented quad axels and left veterans like Weir floored.

“The skill, talent and bravery to even attempt the quad axel is outrageous, let alone to perform it under the stress of competition,” says Weir.

Leading up to the Winter Games, Malinin — who juggles online classes at George Mason University with his six-hour, six-days-a-week training schedule — says he’ll be hyper focused on fine-tuning his programs and staying healthy.

There’s little time for anything else, though he relaxes with skateboarding and art.

“I know how nerve-racking the Olympics can be, but I’m really excited,” says Malinin, who confesses that he’d rather skate than date. “I want to put my priorities into my career first and just see where that takes me.”