Four days after he won his third consecutive U.S. figure skating title, Ilia Malinin normally would have put in four to six hours on the ice back at his home rink in Reston, Virginia.
But on Thursday, he could manage only 30 minutes before he left and went home.
“I knew that I had to go to the rink today,” Malinin said in a phone interview Thursday night, “but it got so bad that I had no strength, mentally or physically, to skate. It was very hard for me to be around a skating rink, especially after what happened, knowing that a lot of them were part of my skating club and clubs that I knew. It’s very heartbreaking to experience that so I just went back home.”
Of course Malinin was referring to the skaters he knew who were on the American Eagle flight that crashed into the Potomac River Wednesday night after a mid-air collision with a military helicopter, killing everyone on board. While there has been no official word from U.S. Figure Skating on the number of skaters who died, or their names, Malinin knows he lost quite a few friends.
“It’s absolutely terrible what happened,” he said. “It’s like their chances just disappear. It’s really heartbreaking. And it’s truly sad that you know these kids are really inspired and looking forward to becoming a better skater and just trying their best to push themselves and having this happen, it’s a tragedy.”
Malinin, 20, flew home from the national championships Monday morning on an American Eagle direct flight from Wichita to Washington Reagan National Airport. On Wednesday night, the younger skaters who attended a national development camp after the championships also flew that same route back to D.C.
“I heard about it when it happened right away,” Malinin said of the crash. “Just hearing that it was coming from Wichita to D.C., I knew what it was. It was devastating to hear that because I was sure some of the development camp kids were on that flight.”
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Also on the flight were Russian-born coaches and former 1994 pairs world champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, now based in Boston. Their son Maxim Naumov finished fourth Sunday in the men’s competition won by Malinin, flying home Monday.
Ilia and his parents have much in common with Maxim and his parents. Ilia’s mother, Tatiana Malinina, was raised in the Soviet Union and competed at 10 consecutive world figure skating championships for Uzbekistan. She finished eighth at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, where Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan finished first and second, and was fourth at the 1999 world championships.
Ilia’s father, Roman Skorniakov, represented Uzbekistan at the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics. He and Malinina moved to Northern Virginia and became coaches before Ilia was born. Ilia took the Russian masculine form of his mother’s last name due to his parents’ concerns that Skorniakov was too difficult to pronounce.
“Me and my parents, we knew them,” Malinin said of Maxim’s parents. “My parents knew them for a really long time. So once we heard that news, it was really devastating, and we feel sorry for Maxim. I have not been able to talk to him but we hope that he’s able to get some help and recover.”
Malinin knows he will get back into a routine soon enough. The 2025 world championships in Boston beckon in less than two months. The 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy are little more than a year away. He is favored to win both. But right now, competitive skating seems so far away.
“For them, a really fun experience, having that team camp, went to having this tragedy happen,” he said of the skaters who are gone. “It really just changed the mood so quickly that we can’t process what really happened. It’s almost like it still doesn’t seem real.”