Ilia Malinin: “I feel very good”
“Overall, I feel very good,” said Malinin, who had been home training in Virginia before traveling to Skate Canada.
He said he won’t plan an extended training bloc with choreographer Shae-Lynn Bourne and jump coach Rafael Arutunian until after the Grand Prix Final, which is set for 4-7 Dec. in Nagoya, Japan.
“[We’ll use that time] to think about that whole Olympic strategy and what we want to do and if we need to change some things with the program,” said Malinin, having had Bourne choreograph his programs in each of the last three seasons.
“But overall I feel pretty confident,” he added. “And for things that didn’t go so well in the program [in France], I was able to kind of change on my own… Again, I’m kind of taking it one step at a time.”
In Saskatoon he will face competition from France’s Kévin Aymoz, Georgian Nika Egadze and Japan’s Miura Kao and Tomono Kazuki. Malinin is looking for his second consecutive Skate Canada title.
Malinin said he’s also not “100 percent” physically, either, but that it’s “not bad enough where I can’t skate, so I’m here. That pretty much solves that answer.”