Weekend Olympic sports recap: The Quad God delivers

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Emotionally, it's hard to think about snow and ice right now. But the winter Olympic sports season soft-launched this weekend with World Cup or Grand Prix openers in figure skating, snowboarding and alpine and freestyle skiing. Here are the performances you should know about:

The Quad God delivered. Last month, 17-year-old American phenom Ilia Malinin became the first person ever to land a quadruple Axel in competition. Because it happened with almost no fans in attendance at a lower-tier event in Lake Placid, some doubters wondered whether he'd have the guts to attempt figure skating's most difficult jump in front of a sell-out crowd near Boston in his Grand Prix debut. Well, Malinin didn't just try the quad Axel, he nailed it — along with four other quads during an electrifying free skate that lifted him from fourth place after a shaky short program to become the youngest man ever to win at Skate America. Read more about Malinin's historic win and watch his free skate here. Watch former Canadian skater Asher Hill's expert breakdown of Malinin's performance here:

WATCH | How Malinin stacks up against past greats:

What will it take to beat Ilia Malinin's quad axel?

2 years ago

Duration 6:13

The American jumping prodigy won gold at his 1st Grand Prix. Asher Hill breaks down his skates to see where he can improve and how his points stack up to other greats.

Three Canadian figure skating duos reached the podium. It's been a tough few years for Canada's figure skaters, who have won just two world-championship medals since 2019 and were shut out at last winter's Olympics. The Canadian program remains in rebuilding mode, but it produced some strong results at Skate America. In the pairs event, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps captured silver while youngsters Kelly Ann Laurin and Loucas Ethier grabbed bronze. In ice dance, Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac took bronze.

Canadian big air athletes grabbed two medals. On Friday, 19-year-old Noah Porter MacLennan soared to silver in the men's freestyle ski big air World Cup opener in Switzerland. The only man to beat Porter MacLennan, who was competing in a big air World Cup event for just the second time, was reigning Olympic champion Birk Ruud of Norway. The next day at the same venue, Canada's Jasmine Baird took bronze in the women's snowboard big air World Cup opener.

Honourable mention goes to three Canadian Olympic or Paralympic athletes who won medals in summer sports over the weekend. At a judo Grand Slam event in Abu Dhabi, Kyle Reyes captured gold and Shady El Nahas bronze in the men's under-100 kilogram division. At the Para track cycling world championships in France, Mel Premble won the women's omnium title in her category on Sunday. She also took gold in the scratch race on Friday.