ST. LOUIS — Ilia Malinin, the 21-year-old ‘Quad God’ of figure skating, had just finished another typically superlative performance in Thursday night’s men’s short program at the U.S. championships when dozens of black stuffed animals began raining down onto the ice.
These weren’t the typical teddy bears or the flowers of days past showered upon a skater finishing his or her program. These were — well, what were they exactly? What did it all mean? It looked strange, and oddly menacing. They were all being thrown onto the ice from one side of the arena. Someone along press row wondered aloud if it was a protest of some sort.
It turns out that NBC and U.S. Figure Skating made the bizarre and cringe-worthy decision to link Malinin’s short program costume to the network’s cross-promotional efforts of the Winter Olympics and the 2025 movie ‘How To Train Your Dragon.’ It turned the moments after Malinin’s program into an NBC promotion on the arena’s big screen.
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The black stuffed animals were actually Toothless, the dragon from the movie, in honor of Malinin dressing like the main character. The movie is part of NBC’s Olympic promotion and is available on Peacock, NBC’s streaming service.
Although this was a collaboration between USFS and NBC, according to USFS — including the planting of all the stuffed dragons in the crowd with instructions to throw them when Malinin finished his program — Malinin said he knew nothing about it.
“I was definitely surprised with that,” he said. “I did not expect that. That was definitely not my plan at all. So I was just as surprised as you are for that.”
But he smiled as he stepped off the ice and looked up as the NBC promotion was playing above him on the big screen. “That just made me feel so warm. The Toothless Dragon is like my spiritual animal, so that was just so incredible.”
Meanwhile, in actual sports news, Malinin performed a sublime short program and landed two quadruple jumps that rocketed him to his highest score ever of 115.10 points, so far ahead of his competitors that he would need to be kidnapped by aliens — hey, it happens in the movies — to not capture his fourth consecutive national title and his first Olympic berth Saturday night.
He was thrilled with how he skated and where he stands with less than a month to go until he will be competing in the Olympic figure skating team competition in Milan. He talked about the fun, acrobatic moves he puts into his performances, such as his signature “raspberry twist” and back flip.
“I feel like it’s very useful for the sport to bring in something new, so everyone has something unique to watch,” Malinin said.
That they certainly did Thursday evening, both during his program, and immediately afterward.
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