What Could Go Right? The ‘Quad God’ Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

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The ‘Quad God’ Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

“Quad God” Ilia Malinin is in first place going into the men’s figure skating finals tomorrow at the 2026 Winter Olympics. The 21-year-old American has seven quadruple jumps planned for his long program, possibly including a quadruple axel, which only he has ever landed in competition. His complete dominance of the sport has earned comparisons to other athletic GOATs, from Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky to Michael Jordan.

Quadruples have been a thing in men’s ice skating only since the mid-2000s, and Malinin’s seven are another push forward in a sport in which  strong jumpers plan “merely” four. But if Malinin is an anomaly, he is also representative of his sports’ progression. The Washington Post did the math ($): Both men and women are doing more rotations in the air than they did 20 years ago, despite a 2018 Olympics rule that reduced the maximum number of jumps in the men’s long skate from eight to seven.

But skating is not the only Olympic sport that is advancing. In the women’s big air snowboarding event, the announcers were agog at the number of athletes throwing out—and landing—triple corks; the trick, which involves three mid-air diagonal flips, was “unheard of” in the women’s competition at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. The same trick, performed on a halfpipe, once sent snowboarding legend Shaun White to the hospital.

Faster, higher, stronger, as the Olympic motto goes. In his fun TED Talk on the subject, journalist David Epstein explains that a century of evolving sporting achievements has to do less with human prowess and more with external factors like cutting-edge technology, wider participation, and better training. (The 1904 Olympic marathon winner gulped rat poison and brandy as he ran, Epstein notes. Don’t ask.)

This was very much in evidence in the lead-up to this year’s Olympics, as smartwear equipment tracked athletes’ biometrics and AI programs helped hockey teams analyze patterns of play. This year is the first that curlers will rely on technology instead of the honor system to call faulty throws. Even Zambonis are evolving—they now come in electric models, with precision control steering.

The Quad God’s story, too, has more of a technological component than meets the eye. From an early age, the son of two former figure skaters had a talent for jumping, but he didn’t pursue skating in earnest until a kinesiology professor hooked him and other young skaters to a 10-camera system that analyzed their jumps. The gathered data was then uploaded to a program that compared their IRL jumps to a mathematics-based model of what was possible with modifications as slight as an arm adjustment or head tilt. Thus, reported The Atlantic ($), were Malinin and his father alerted to the fact that quadruples were achievable. Just shy of a decade later, a Quad God was born.

At a certain point, of course, humans do run up against physical limits. Jim Richards, the professor who did the jump analysis, remarked at the time that he doubted quintuples were possible without a “unique” and “unusual physique.” 

Nevertheless, Malinin says he has already landed one in practice and will turn his attention to landing them in public after the Olympics. Because, in the end, there is something to be said for the driving spirit of competition, too. Once an athlete raises the bar of what’s possible, it’s guaranteed others will follow. Most male snowboarders, for instance, could land triple corks on a halfpipe by the early 2020s, 10 years after tackling double corks. (It didn’t hurt that the halfpipe grew from 18 to 22 feet after the 2006 Olympics.) Now the women are “stomping” them as well—off a ramp—after Austrian snowboarder Anna Gasser first landed one seven years ago.

And then there’s the matter of medical advances lengthening athletes’ careers. Lots of chatter surrounded skier Lindsey Vonn’s decision to compete on a torn ACL this past weekend, particularly after she crashed in the downhill event, broke her leg, and was airlifted from the course. Until recently, though, the 41-year-old wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to compete again; the robotic surgery that made a quick, pain-free recovery from a previous knee injury possible has only been widely available in the past 5–10 years. 

The sports world is a great microcosm for the way progress works. We keep pushing limits, asking what’s next, and moving further into the future—even if sometimes we have to circle back: Skiers might actually be slower this year as a result of a new ban on the “forever chemicals” in ski wax. And we are reminded that we must always account for the beating heart of it all: the human element. Malinin may be the Quad God, but as we saw when Japanese skater Yuma Kagiyama topped him by 10 points in the team event’s short program, sometimes there’s no replacement for focus and artistry.

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By the Numbers

50: Number of women’s events at Milano Cortina, the most gender-balanced Winter Olympics to date

82%: Share of Indian households that now have tap water, up from 17% in 2019

<5: Years a consumer would need to break even on a home battery installation, which used to require more time than the battery’s lifespan

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Quick Hits

👶 An experimental surgery that allows cancer survivors to give birth has resulted so far in eight healthy babies. The procedure repositions reproductive organs before a patient undergoes radiation, then moves them back into place once treatment ends.

🫆 Property crime has fallen 66% in the US since 1990. A slew of factors—from the decreased reliance on cash to doorbell cameras—have made the difference. Another positive crime story: Across England and Wales, homicides have fallen to their lowest level in nearly 50 years.

🏳️‍🌈 The Philippines Supreme Court ruled that members of same-sex couples can co-own property. It is one of few legal protections afforded the LGBTQ community in the conservative Catholic country.

📉 Lead exposure rates in the US have fallen by a factor of more than 100 since the 1960s, according to a new study of hair clippings. A particularly sharp decline followed the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

🎳 Somalia has opened its first modern bowling alley, a sign of stability and security—not to mention a growing middle class—after 35 years of civil war.

🌏 Global trade of plastic waste has fallen by more than two-thirds in the past decade, largely the result of China’s import ban in 2018. The benefit: less plastic waste leaking into the environment.

💊 A new pill can drop cholesterol levels by as much as 60%, a cost-effective alternative to injections for those at risk of a heart attack. FDA approval will be fast-tracked.

👧 The number of girls worldwide subjected to genital mutilation is now one in three, down from one in two in 1990. Half of that progress occurred in the past decade alone.

🤒 Current flu vaccines don’t do much to prevent transmission, but a new nasal spray vaccine can—at least in mice. The vaccine, for H5N1 bird flu, may be a significant tool in our arsenal for future pandemics that emerge from animals.

🧑🏾‍🎓 The share of black women in the US with a bachelor’s degree has doubled since 2000. The share of black men with the same degree has increased by more than 10 percentage points.

⚡ The world reached peak coal in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency. IEA predicts that electricity demand will continue to increase over the remainder of the decade, but renewables will overtake coal by 2030.

🍵 Bonobos can play “tea party,” too: An ape named Kanzi is the first non-human to understand the concept of make-believe.

🧬 A new generation of CAR-T cell therapy destroys cancer cells in mice without affecting the immune system, opening possibilities for treating autoimmune conditions while removing a serious cancer-related side effect.

👀 What we’re watching: New York has become the 13th state to legalize assisted suicide, and more states are considering bills. Is it progress?

💡 Editor’s pick: In other sports innovation news, football helmet safety has accelerated in recent years with new designs that better absorb impact.

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