Ilia changed his jump layout for IWMFLY at SoI Spokane! I believe it’s now 3T and 3S (replacing 3Lz and 3F), but it’s a bit hard to tell at the zoom level, so someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
Source: TheIliaSociety / Sarah Hodgson
This one’s from after the free skate. Ilia talks about how this medal compares to past WC medals, the support of the crowd, his hopes for the growing popularity of figure skating, and (very vaguely) his plans for next season.
Source: TheIliaSociety / J Sports 4
From Ilia’s interview with Shizuka Arakawa after the 2025 GPF. Full interview shared and kindly translated by /u/sofastsomaybe here.
In honor of Kao's planned training camp with Ilia, here are some excerpts from an interview with Kao from last summer. I love what he says about Ilia's emotional openness in his skating, because that's something that stands out to me, too!
Source: TheIliaSociety
“He is the sweetest. I got to ask him some of the stuff that was going on at the games that I don’t think he’s even said publicly, and he probably won’t. It’s just all of the variables that are out of your control, and how to adapt to those things. We also just laughed a ton. He is so easy to laugh with.”
“I have so much respect for him for what he does on ice, the way he portrays himself, and the way he creates a show. But I just also really respect how he wants to push the sport despite the risks involved. That’s incredible, and something that’s very brave.”
The article seems to be inconsistently paywalled (it worked at first, then went behind a paywall, then worked again in incognito mode), so here are the Ilia quotes:
On SoI:
>“It’s such a fun experience where you get to see all the skaters in their glory,” Malinin said over the phone Thursday. “It’s such a completely different vibe from competitions. It’s just fun and everyone out there is going to be having the time of their lives.”
On Portland and access to skating (this part is so Ilia, haha):
>Malinin, 21, isn’t sure if he’s been to Portland before, since he travels so much as an ice skater. But he does remember his brief moment of Portland activism.
>Earlier this year, he took to Instagram to show support for the ice rink at Portland’s Lloyd Center mall.
>“I think it’s really important that everyone understand that it’s hard for everyone to find a place to skate,” Malinin said, “because it is such a very demanding sport in terms of physically, emotionally, financially.”
>It’s hard, he said, for people to even find a place to skate.
>People need access to rinks, he said, “learn to fall in love” with the sport of ice skating.
On how he started skating:
>Malinin himself has been skating since he was very young. Both of his parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, were Olympic skaters and also coached skating.
>“I was never home or at daycare,” Malinin said. “I’d always be hanging out at the rink.”
On what people can expect to see (aka Ilia sets expectations):
>“We’re not necessarily burning ourselves out or giving ourselves something that’s very tricky,” Malinin said. “Safety is the number one priority.”
Ilia spent a lot of yesterday’s Stargazer working on his loop and toe loop jumps, including a couple moments where he marked the jumps/entries. I love seeing how Ilia trains and refines his jumps, so here’s a little compilation of the marked jumps vs the full jump attempts! All footage is my own.
My footage from yesterday’s SoI Stargazer :) Some assorted other videos in this thread, including footage of him doing alternating direction waltz jumps right before this.
Please forgive the poor video quality—I struggle to both watch & film, so my compromise was to just film zoomed out with minimal camera movement and not watching the phone screen.
Will post a review soon! For now I’ll just say that each and every skater performed their heart out ❤️
On his plans for 2034:
Will Malinin, a three-time world champion and an Olympic gold medalist in the figure skating team event known for his quadruple jumps, still be competing then?
“I sure hope so. We’ll see how my body holds on to then, but I’m looking forward to being here no matter what,”
...
“I already envision how everything is going to look in 2034. I mean, again, I don’t know if I’ll be skating then or just here representing but either way, I’ll really be excited and looking forward to how that’s going to look.”
On what organizers should be prioritizing in 2034:
"It makes sense to just have it be as packed as possible and really make it engaging for the audience to enjoy,” he said, while ensuring “it also (works) really well for the skaters, because in the end, we’re the ones on the ice. This event is around us.”
...
How skaters competing at the Maverik Center in 2034 are affected depends on “how the environment of the arena is going to be,” Malinin said, as well as whether the media is able “to get in our face as fast as possible” before and after a performance.
“Sometimes, I think it’s good to find a balance where we feel comfortable enough to be able to open up,” he said, adding athletes have prepared for years for what is “one of the biggest accomplishments of our careers.”
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There are also some good quotes from Amber and Alysa and a handful of photos at the end of the article.
Rio Nakata recently shouted out Joshua Farris as an influence on him and said he will be skating his exhibition program to Give Me Love.
Watching this, I can see why it made such a strong impression on Rio. To me it’s a rare example of a program that never feels like it’s just trying to get to the next required element—the musicality and flow is incredible.
Here are the main points I got from machine translation. Please kindly correct me if any of this is wrong; I tried to compare two different machine translations, but I don’t speak Japanese myself.
- Short program is choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne. The music is similar in vibe to Shoma’s “Great Spirit,” and Rio thinks it will be a signature program for him.
- Rio confirms he will be keeping/reworking his Gladiator free skate. He’s thinking of incorporating a straight-line step sequence as an homage to Yagudin and classic skating.
- Exhibition program will be “Give Me Love,” which Joshua Farris once skated to and Rio has always wanted to skate to.
- Rio names past skaters that have influenced him: Yuzu, Yagudin, Plushenko, and Joshua Farris (!).
- Rio describes being surprised by the men’s event at the Milan Olympics and says maybe there really was a “demon” (魔物) at the Olympics 😭
Not a legal combo, but very cool to see what Yu-Hsiang is playing with! Can’t wait to see what’s ahead for him next season.
Source: figureskatinggoes (IG); originally posted 4/20/26
Edit: Somehow at some point in the process of trying to make minor edits here, a bunch of the bullet-pointed content got removed 😞 Very frustrating. I will try to add it back in later (and maybe move to a more stable Google doc) if I have the time.....
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With the upcoming changes in scoring and program layout, I got curious about the history of changes in the IJS and went down a bit of a rabbit hole. This is what I've been able to find so far. If you notice errors or have additions, please share! Years refer to the year in which the season started.
2002: In response to the judging scandal at the Salt Lake Olympics, the ISU begins working on a points-based judging system. They also make judging anonymous, with 9 of 12 judges' scores randomly selected and the other 3 not counted. The anonymous judging is controversial. More detail provided in Hines's Historical Dictionary of Figure Skating.
2003: Test debut of IJS at Grand Prix events. I haven't been able to find ISU communications describing the scale of values or program requirements for this season, but based on scoring protocols from GP events, it appears to be similar to what was rolled out in 2004.
2004: IJS implemented for all ISU events.
Special Regulations Single & Pair Skating 2004 outlines scale of values, program requirements, and scoring guidelines.
Notable differences in scoring compared to modern scoring include:
Notable differences in program layout compared to modern programs include:
Judging is still anonymous.
Sometime between 2005 and 2007: Max step sequence level increased to Level 4. Observation: it appears that in early IJS, it was much rarer to attain level 4 in spins and step sequence. I don't know how much of that was differences in judging and how much was skaters not yet having perfected how to train for the new system.
2008: Adjustments made to scoring and free skate layout.
ISU Communication 1494 - Scale of Values, Guidelines for Marking GOE and Levels
Scoring changes:
Layout changes:
2010: Jump scoring overhauled in response to the quadruple jump controversy at the Vancouver Olympics. Quads in this era have the best reward to risk tradeoff they ever will!
We also see the introduction of the choreo step sequence and choreo spiral.
ISU Communication 1611 - Scale of Values, Levels of Difficulty, and Guidelines for Marking GOE
Scoring changes:
Layout changes (based on program protocols from this year):
2012: Time to say goodbye to the choreographic spiral requirement in the women's free skate and to the distinction between categories of step sequences.
2014: ISU abolishes anonymous judging following controversy over scoring at the Sochi Olympics.
2018: Massive scoring overhaul and significant changes to program layout!
ISU Communication 2168 - Scale of Values, Levels of Difficulty, and Guidelines for Marking GOE
Scoring changes:
Layout changes:
2020: ISU publishes a communication making the base value of 4Lo, 4F, and 4Lz uniform at 11 across the board.
They quickly suspend it, ostensibly because covid disruptions will not allow it to be tested adequately ahead of Beijing. This scoring change is never reintroduced.
2022: PCS categories reduced from 5 to 3. The 3 categories are now Skating Skills, Composition, and Presentation.
Sometime between 2019 and 2022: Base values for qs and << introduced? (I am having trouble figuring out exactly when what with the take-backsies thing on the 2020 communication--if anyone knows, let me know.)
2024: ISU adds values for quints, with a flat base value of 14 across the board.
2026: The changes we're all talking about....
Scoring changes:
Program layout changes:
If you made it this far....congratulations 😂. What changes do you think were for the better? What changes would you like to see rolled back? Any corrections/additions to share?
Mods, feel free to delete if the Ilia connection is too tangential, but this made me smile too much not to want to share.
Sources: taquiner_ (twitter), Colantotte (IG)
Came across this bit of figure skating history and thought it was too cool not to share. Jeannette Altwegg performing a “toeless lutz” in 1948.
I included a slow-mo replay to better appreciate the technique, which almost feels like a hybrid between a lutz and an axel.
Source: British Pathe, “Queen of the Ice (1948)” (at about 0:28)
Credit: ZingnikFanAcc
(I think this is from today’s SoI Stargazer in Saint Louis.)
This would make a quint with perfect GOE worth less than a 4Lz with perfect GOE.
Source for the summary table: azayakanablue (Instagram)
I checked against the recently released ISU communication, and this is accurate. It is a change compared to the 2025-2026 communication (where +5 GOE was 7 points), yet is not underlined, so I can only hope that maybe it’s an error.