The Quad God reborn: Ilia Malinin leads world championships after Olympic shock | Ilia Malinin

Ilia Malinin bounced back from her disappointment at this year’s Winter Olympics by leading after the short program at the world figure skating championships on Thursday.

Malinin, sporting a new haircut, gave fans what they expected from the two-time reigning world champion at the O2 Arena in Prague.

This performance showed that Olympic failure was behind him. He will enter Saturday’s free skate with a huge lead of more than nine points after a personal best of 111.29 in the short program.

Known as Quad God, Malinin opened with a quad flip and a combination of quad lutz and a triple toe loop. The only skater to land a quad axel in competition performed only a triple version of his trademark jump.

French skater Adam Siao Him Fa landed a perfect quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe loop and a quad salchow for 101.85 points. Estonian Aleksandr Selevko took a surprise third place after a personal best of 96.49.

Malinin helped the United States win team gold in Milan and was heavily favored to win individual gold with an unrivaled program. His five-point lead over Kagiyama and Siao after the short program seemed insurmountable. But in one of the biggest upsets in figure skating history, Malinin fell twice and made other glaring errors during a disastrous free skate, falling from first to eighth place.

The 21-year-old said he succumbed to pressure during his first Games. “The nerves became so overwhelming,” he said at the time, “and especially getting into that starting pose, I just felt like all the traumatic moments in my life were really starting to flood my head. So many negative thoughts were flooding in there and I couldn’t deal with them.”

Olympic champion Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan will miss this week’s competition.