The American figure skating star is expected to repeat as a world champion on Saturday. But he had to channel his grief over losing fellow skaters in January’s D.C. plane crash to get there.
Two months ago, after easily winning his third straight U.S. Figure Skating national title, Ilia Malinin showed up at his rink to train for the world championships, yet could not bring himself to skate for even a second.
Malinin, the overwhelming gold medal favorite for next year’s Olympics in Italy, had laced up his skates, looked around, and felt an emptiness that stopped him.
That week, 28 people involved in skating had died when an Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet over the Potomac River, killing all 67 passengers. Among them were young skaters, including three from the Washington Figure Skating Club, Malinin’s club, and others who at times would use the rink in Reston, Va., where he trains.
A coach, a skater and his father, and a whole family — two young sisters and their parents — from that club died, and Malinin, who is 20, was so brokenhearted in the weeks afterward that he could not even bear to say their names, he said.
“Skating usually helps me handle hard things going on in my life, but it was just too emotional to be there,” Malinin said in an interview with The New York Times the first week of March. “I tried to have a productive day of skating. But I just couldn’t take my mind to another place. I just couldn’t.”
When he returned to the rink several days later, he said, he redoubled his efforts to be the best men’s singles skater in the world, one bound for stardom at the Olympics nearly 10 months from now.
