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Fairfax figure skating star Ilia Malinin captured Olympic gold for the United States on Sunday night, delivering under intense pressure to secure the team title by a single point at the Milan Cortina Winter Games.

The Americans and Japan were tied after seven of the competition’s eight performances, leaving the outcome in the hands of the men. Malinin responded with five quadruple jumps and a free-skate score of 200.03 points, helping the United States successfully defend its Olympic team championship.

Japan’s Shun Sato followed with three quads and a cleaner program, but his 194.86-point performance placed second behind Malinin.

The United States finished the three-day competition with 69 points. Japan earned its second consecutive Olympic silver medal with 68.

“I was like, ‘OK, I’m the deciding factor,’” Malinin said. “‘I need to just, you know, do what I need to do.’”

The victory also gave the American team the prompt medal ceremony it did not receive at the 2022 Beijing Games, where a Russian doping case delayed the presentation of its medals for more than two years.

Malinin closes the deal

Malinin, the 21-year-old known as the “Quad God,” rebounded from a short program that fell below his usual standard.

He began his free skate with a quad flip, chose a safer triple axel instead of another quad and worked through several mistakes. He finished emphatically with consecutive combinations: a quad toe-triple flip followed by a quad salchow-triple axel.

“I knew that it was going to be a tiebreaker between the men’s event,” Malinin said. “So I really just went straight into this, and just went for it. It went exactly the way I wanted, the way I planned.”

The son of Olympic skaters Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov then waited as Sato attempted to overtake him.

Sato skated from an opening quad lutz through a finishing triple lutz with few errors. He pumped his fist when the music ended, but his score was not enough to move Japan ahead.

“I didn’t really think about whether or not I could beat Ilia,” Sato said through a translator, “but I definitely wanted to do it.”

Five-point lead disappears

The United States entered Sunday with a five-point advantage over Japan, but that cushion vanished during the pairs and women’s free skates.

World champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara won the pairs segment for Japan with a career-best 155.55 points. Americans Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea produced the best free skate of their partnership, scoring 135.36 to finish ahead of Canada and preserve a vital point.

That point ultimately became the Americans’ margin of victory.

Kam and O’Shea opened their program with the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” and finished with Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

“We walked into the day, walked into the rink with positive emotions, with an offensive attitude, and that showed out there on the ice,” said O’Shea, a 34-year-old Olympic debutant who served as an alternate in 2018.

Japan moved within two points of the United States with two events remaining.

The Americans then used three-time national champion Amber Glenn in the women’s free skate instead of world champion Alysa Liu. Glenn spun out of her opening triple axel and missed an earlier triple in a combination, forcing her to add a double toe loop later.

She scored 138.62 points and finished third in the segment.

Kaori Sakamoto, the individual bronze medalist in Beijing, won with 148.62 points and pulled Japan even with the United States. Anastasiia Gubanova placed second while helping Georgia remain in contention for bronze.

Glenn said her legs felt heavy and that she left many points available.

“I did not feel or perform the way I wanted to,” she said. “The adrenaline was really up and I think I just crashed a little bit.”

Malinin’s closing performance ensured those mistakes did not cost the Americans the championship.

Italy’s Matteo Rizzo delivered one of the strongest free skates of his career to help the host country claim bronze with 60 points. Georgia finished fourth with 56 and remained without a Winter Olympics medal.

“All of us are just so thrilled for all the work you put into this,” Malinin said of his teammates. “We cannot be here without each other.”