St. Petersburg, Sep 15, Dmitry Yedigarev. US figure skater Ilya Malinin will go down in history after the clean execution of the quadruple axel, said the honored coach of the USSR Tatyana Tarasova. Malinin became the first who managed to cleanly execute the quadruple axel in competitions. The 17-year-old athlete performed at the U.S. International Classic, where he took first place, scoring 257.28 points. «This is a huge technical progress, for the first time in the world he made four and a half turns. I will not say that it is very difficult, but it is very dangerous. I think that with good skating, he will qualify for good places. Of course, his name will go down in the history of figure skating. We did not think that someone would jump four and a half. Maybe a hundred years would pass, and someone would jump five and a half,» Tarasova said. Earlier Axel in four and a half turns with two errors on the road during a free program at the Japanese Championships was performed by two-time Olympic champion Japanese Yuzuru Hanyu.
