Overview
- Ilia Malinin posted a personal-best 111.29 in Prague on Thursday, landing a quad flip, a triple Axel, and a quad Lutz–triple toe to lead the World Championships by 9.44 points over Adam Siao Him Fa.
- The men’s title will be decided Saturday with the free skate, where Malinin can complete a three-peat that would match Nathan Chen as the last U.S. man to win three world titles in a row.
- The short-program podium positions are Malinin first, Siao Him Fa second with 101.85, and Estonia’s Aleksandr Selevko third with 96.49, with Japan’s Shun Sato fourth and Yuma Kagiyama sixth after an Axel mistake.
- Elsewhere at Worlds, Kaori Sakamoto won the women’s crown in her farewell, Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin captured pairs gold, and France’s Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry lead ice dance after the rhythm dance.
- This post‑Olympic Worlds features notable absences that shaped the fields, including men’s Olympic champion Mikhail Shaidorov and women’s Olympic champion Alysa Liu, setting a different competitive landscape only weeks after Milan‑Cortina.