Reigning champ Ilia Malinin of US leads Japan's Yuma Kagiyama at figure skating world championships

Malinin, who has not been beaten since 2023, has become the overwhelming favorite to deliver more U.S. gold at the Milano-Cortina Olympics. And the Grand Prix Final champion from Fairfax, Virginia, doesn't seem to mind all that pressure, performing with a swagger that belies his age, even if he felt compelled to point out Thursday night: “I'm still human.”

Good luck convincing Kagiyama and the rest of the field of it.

As Malinin wrapped his short program, set to “Running” by American rapper NF, the TD Garden crowd stood in ovation.

“He just looks so effortless,” opined Malinin's American teammate, Jason Brown. “That, to me, is what is so mind-blowing. What he does with so much ease, you feel like the sky's the limit.”

Kagiyama, a three-time world silver medalist, nearly set his own career-best with 107.09 points Thursday night. Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan was a distant third with 94.77 heading into Saturday night’s free skate, which will wrap up the final world championships before the Winter Games next year.

The big question now is whether Malinin, the only skater ever to have landed the quad axel in competition, can set a record for a free skate by landing seven four-revolution jumps in a single program. The best he has done this season is six.

“That would be my goal,” Malinin said, “to go for all of those.”

The world championships continued Thursday night, when the first medals were to be awarded following the pairs free skate. Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan had a nearly two-point lead over Sara Conti and Niccolo Macci of Italy after their short program as they try to win back the world title they held two years ago.

Defending champs Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps of Canada have work to do. They earned negative grades of execution for their twist, throw triple loop and spin in their short program, leaving them in seventh with 67.32 points.

One of the subplots to the world championships is how many spots each country can secure for the Olympics. The formula is relatively complicated, but for countries such as the U.S. with three competitors at worlds, the top two placements must total 13 or less for that nation to receive the maximum of three spots at the Winter Games.

Malinin is certain to give the Americans one good score. The other will depend on the performances in Saturday night's free skate for Andrew Torgashev and Brown, the 30-year-old, two-time Olympian who continues to defy his age.

Torgashev spent a while atop the leaderboard Thursday night after a short program that scored 87.27 points and left him in eighth place. Brown wound up 12th with 84.72, a total that would have been better had the perennial fan favorite not overshot his triple axel or double a planned triple toe loop in his combination with a triple lutz.

Nevertheless, Brown was all smiles after a solid skate amid a trying season. He's been dealing with boot issues that forced him to withdraw from the U.S. championships in January, and only recently did he finally get his equipment sorted out.

“You know what? It felt great,” Brown said. “I'm proud of the fight that I gave this season. You know, every single time I got knocked down, my coaches and sports psych and my family would like, rally behind me, like, ‘No, we’re going to keep pushing. We're going to figure it out.' And so out of that, oh my gosh, it's so special.”

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