In 2021, renowned Russian figure skating coach Alexei Mishin he said that no figure skater will ever be able to successfully perform a quad in their life. The following year, two-time Olympic gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu prepared to master the vault, but when he tried to do so at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, he failed to complete four and a half turns in the air. Mishin’s statement seemed to be confirmed.
“I thought I’d see a five-toe before I saw a four-toe,” says 2002 Olympic bronze medalist Timothy Goebel, known in his day as the “Quad King.” Goebel was the first skater to perform a quad jump in competition back in 1998, 10 years later Canadian Kurt Browning performed the first ratified quadruple twisting jump, a toe loop, at the world championships, ushering in the quad era in men’s figure skating.
Over the following decades, more skaters such as Goebel emerged and added more quad variations. (There are six main types of quad bikes figure skating jumpsnamed after their creators and distinguished by their launch, whether with a blade, edge, or toe.) By 2016, all quads had been successfully completed in competition — except for one axle, which Mishin, Goebel and others thought they would never see.
Then in 2022, Ilia Malinin did it. The Virginia native, who was just 17 at the time, had already called himself the “Quad God” before this year’s U.S. International Figure Skating Classics, but landing on the quad cemented the title. The American phenom didn’t make the 2022 Olympic team, but he has won the world title twice in the last two seasons and is a hefty favorite to win men’s singles gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics based solely on his technical skills. All this left the skating world wondering what would happen next for the ski jumping phenomenon and the sport in general.
The fifth, a jump of five revolutions, is the logical next step in this progression. Malinin, nicknamed “The Simone Biles of figure skating” he was not ashamed of his desire land on one of these items, reportedly going so far as to prepare for a quintuple attempt tardy last year during training sessions. Recently, Related press have considered it and declared that it is impossible to do a fifth, stating that “most sports scientists agree that the speed and amplitude necessary for five-turn jumps are truly impossible”, although they do not directly quote any doubters.
However, a fifth is not as impossible as the AP article suggests, and if anyone can pull it off, it will be Malinin, a generational talent who has already done generational talent things. The quint will be the culmination of decades of development in the sport, from the judging system, through training practices, to the definition of the jumps themselves.
“I believe it is possible” – Malinin he told CBS Sunday Morning.
If you’re watching venerable figure skating programs, you may notice that people used to jump differently. “When people got up to jump, [they would] they have a huge lag, they rotate as they go down and they get into a kind of open position,” says Justin Dillon, director of figure skating in the U.S. This technique created a very nice arc in the air that had a floating, ethereal feel to it.
“But it’s not effective when we’re talking about multi-rotational jumps, and that’s because now you have a limited amount of time in the air where you can actually achieve maximum angular velocity and then maintain it,” says Lindsay Slater Hannigan, an assistant professor of physical therapy at the University of Illinois at Chicago and manager of sports science for U.S. Figure Skating.
The heights that top male athletes can jump are relatively similar across the board. Malinin and other elite skaters are about 20 inches above the ground at the peak of their jump. The only thing left to manipulate is the rotational speed. “What we’ve learned in the meantime is that what actually makes or breaks the jump is the ability to get into that rotational position as quickly as possible,” Hannigan says, “because that allows you to maintain a really high angular velocity for longer.”