Ilia Malinin captures 4th men's title at Skate America

Okay, he had one blemish in the short program. If you look at him and Daniel Grassl, he had a 10-point lead over the Italian skater. It's his to lose. He wants to enjoy skating. Very intense program, quad flip. Beautiful takeoff. I thought he had it in the daily thing. Maybe it was a tiny bit too big. You come down and literally the ice is not where you thought it was. And your upper body folds over. Triple Axel almost looks too easy for him. Beautiful. We know he can do a quad. He's not trying a quad axel today, but he can. It's free skate. It's built on the framework of the warrior's journey. Resilience and overcoming hardship. The tournament February. That's a great question, Brenda. How has he grown? He's added a few quads, he has. But what he has definitely added is a style that is truly his own. I think that's why the short program surprised us so much. He stepped away from the style. This is much closer to what we'd expect from him. I think this has the potential to extraordinary program. It's not quite there. Not yet. And he was changing things all over the place again today. Both of us are thinking the same thing. When you train a program, you have certain things that are lined up in the music, little moments, speed, power, flow. And when you keep changing it, how can you not lose a whole bunch of those? So have we seen what this program really looks like? I don't think so. I don't think so yet either. You know, so... But maybe those were the decisions he needed to make today, right? And who knows, maybe he made them before. I think he got on the ice. I've spoken to him and I think he enjoys stepping on the ice and going, all right, so you open the fridge and you go, okay, what's for dinner? I'm going to do this, I'll mix that with that. Okay, I think Daniel Russell knows that he's going to move out of that chair, the leader's chair. Final score is to come in right now. The United States of America. Another exciting journey with Ilya. The question is, how big will the score be? Well, Roman is reaching up, so I guess pretty high. So not the best free skate of the night, but wow, overall, he does it. I think that's the right result. Yep. I agree. And that's his fourth win at Skate America. Last three years, as we said, undefeated except for that blemish at the Olympic Games, which was a big one, and for Daniel Grassl, What a free skate he had. This is the sixth medal of his career, but maybe the biggest surprise of the evening would be the teenager who finished in third place from Israel, Tamir Kupperman, wins a medal in his very first Grand Prix competition. What a feather in Daniel Grassl's skate guards. He must be incandescent with joy. And don't forget, Jason Brown in fourth place, Donovan Grillo in fifth. And you see there, the Canadian, Alexa Rakic, finishes Perdida in tenth place.