As the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games draw to a close, this season has brought to our attention global icons who treat “impossible” as a suggestion rather than a rule.
Safe to say, the talent we’ve seen on screen already has us excited for the next Olympic Winter Games in the French Alps. Here are two trailblazers to keep on your radar as their careers continue to progress.
Ilia Malinin: Rewriting the Figure Skating Rulebook
Ilia Malinin has graced our screens the past couple of weeks competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics. The 21-year-old competes for Team USA, and started skating when he was 6 years old.
Malinin is certainly making waves in the figure skating scene, pushing the limits of the sport, landing the first legal backflip on one blade, known as “the Bonaly flip”. Named after Surya Bonaly, the first person to complete the then-illegal move at the 1998 Nagano Games. It’s worth noting that Malinin didn’t earn technical points for including this impressive trick in his routine, it simply demonstrates his passion for the sport.
Skating runs in the family for Malinin, as he is currently coached by his parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, both former Olympians, who initially didn’t want Malinin to skate “at all”.
Prior to his Olympic debut, Malinin was already making waves on the ice skating scene, having earned the nickname “quad-god” in reflection of his ability to consistently land quad jumps. But the skating revolutionary is better known for being the first person to successfully land one of the hardest jumps in figure skating, the quadruple axel, in competition in 2022. He was just 17 years old at the time.
What adds to the spectacle of the performance are the athlete’s outfits, Malinin’s outfits were designed by Satomi Ito, a world acclaimed figure skating costume designer. Ito’s designs focus on how she can motivate the athletes, “The most important thing is for them to feel fired up, confident, and like they can perform well that day.”
As he bridges the gap between the legacy of "the Bonaly flip" and the frontier of the quadruple Axel, Malinin remains the one to watch as he crafts the future of figure skating in real-time.
Eileen Gu: Balancing Quantum Physics with Olympic Gold
We’ve also been keeping a watch on Eileen Gu, a free style skier known for her versatility across all three disciplines: Big Air, Halfpipe, and Slopestyle. Gu, also known by her Chinese name Gu Ailing (谷爱凌), has competed for China since 2019.
Despite controversy around her choice to compete for China instead of Team USA, Gu’s decision was based on having a greater impact through inspiring young Chinese girls to get onto the slopes, “The opportunity to help inspire millions of young people during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing … is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Speaking to Grazia Magazine, Gu attributes her interest in skiing to her mum, “She took me up to the hill when I was three, which was the youngest age that I would be allowed to play in ski school. So I would be able to get my ski lessons, and then she would be able to get her laps in without me slowing her down. That was how I started skiing.”
The 2026 Milano-Cortina Games continues Gu’s streak of success following her three medals at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, which made her the first freestyle skier to win three medals at a single winter Olympics. This follows her monumental performance in 2021 when she became the first woman to land a forward double cork 1440 in competition. A trick which involves two inverted, off-axis flips combined with four full rotations.
Gu is certainly a modern triple threat, balancing her Olympic career with her academic studies of Quantum Physics and International Relations at Stanford University, alongside a modelling career. Gu continues to push the boundaries and has discussed how her studies of quantum physics at Stanford influences her approach to understanding the physics behind her sport. Her talent has not gone unnoticed beyond the realms of the Olympics, with TIME including Gu under its Pioneers category as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, followed by a recent cover feature in February 2026.
With four years until the next winter olympics, there will be plenty of competitions in the meantime where we can watch these athletes reinvent our expectations of the sports.
Images: The Straits Times, TIME
