US skating star Ilia Malinin leads after near-perfect short program at the Milan Cortina Olympics

MILAN (AP) — Ilia Malinin playfully threw a couple of jabs at a TV camera while skating off the ice Tuesday night, the pressure of his first Olympics having seemingly vanished following a team gold medal and a near-perfect short program to begin the men's competition.

The American wunderkind didn't exactly deliver a knockout blow to the rest of the field.

He came close, though.

The self-styled “Quad God” landed a pair of quadruple jumps, another jaw-dropping backflip and his signature “raspberry twist,” piling up 108.16 points and taking a five-point lead over Yuma Kagiyama of Japan into the decisive free skate Friday night.

“In the team event, I think I had too much, I’ll call it, ‘Olympic excitement.’ It really just felt like there was so much pressure,” Malinin said. “I was so hyped up, so excited to skate out there and it really came back and beat me.”

In fact, Kagiyama beat Malinin in the short program during the team competition last weekend, leaving many to wonder whether the overwhelming favorite for Olympic gold was letting the pressure get to him. But he bounced back in the free skate to beat Japan’s Shun Sato in a head-to-head battle, clinching a second straight gold for the U.S. and giving him a boost of momentum.

“So coming to this short program,” Malinin said, “in an individual event, I wanted to take things a little more slowly, a little more calm, and honestly just push the auto-pilot button and see what happens.”

Kagiyama scored 103.07 points while Adam Siao Him Fa of France, the last skater to beat Malinin more than two years ago, was third with 102.55. But both face a herculean task in catching him, given Malinin's huge technical advantage over a longer program.

“This is sports,” Kagiyama said through an interpreter. “You never know what is going to happen.”

Except that Malinin is the surest thing in figure skating.

The two-time reigning world champion opened with a big quad flip Tuesday night, landed a perfect triple axel — perhaps saving the quad axel only he has ever landed for the free skate — and a quad lutz-triple toe loop that scored more than 22 points by itself.

By the time he landed the backflip and the raspberry twist, the crowd at the Milano Ice Skating Arena was ready to roar.

“I was definitely pleased that I was able to stay a little more on my feet this time,” Malinin said with a smile. “Usually I feel like I’m just there to do stuff, but this time I felt like I can really enjoy the program and the story behind it.”

Kagiyama was the only skater after Malinin, and he nearly matched him with his own splendid program. But on his final jump, a triple axel, the reigning Olympic silver medalist had to step out, and that cost him some valuable points in the grade of execution.

Now, both Malinin and Kagiyama have two days to think about their free skates.

Asked how he'll pass the time, Malinin replied: “Give myself a mental reset and see how the approach for the free program will be.”

The opening night of men's figure skating packed a little bit of everything.

There was the cheeky fun of a “Minions” program by Spanish skater Tomas-Llorenc Guarino Sabate, who was worried last week that he wouldn't get to perform it because of a copyright issue. There was the artistry of the Japanese skaters, the high-flying aerial acrobatics of the American contingent, and one of the most emotional moments of the entire Winter Games.

U.S. figure skater Maxim Naumov, whose parents Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were killed in a plane crash just over a year ago, fulfilled a dream they had shared by performing on Olympic ice. When his program drew to an end, Naumov stayed on his knees the middle of the rink, looking up to the heavens and telling them, “Look at what we’ve done.”

“Whatever life throws at you, if you can be resilient and push a little bit more than you think, you can do so much more,” said Naumov, who carried a picture of his parents to the kiss-and-cry, and whose score of 85.65 easily got him through to the free skate.

“You have to have that willpower and do things you love,” he said, “and that’s exactly what I am going to do.”

The podium fight among the real contenders began with Kao Miura, the former world junior champion. But the Four Continents winner just last month popped his opening quad salchow, fell on a later jump and never really recovered.

Sato, the second of Japan's powerhouse trio, made a mistake of his own when he spun out of the second half of a quad toe-triple toe combo. He got through the rest of the program but scored just 88.70 points, leaving him well out of contention.

It took Kagiyama, their countryman, to finally deliver a memorable performance for Japan in the short program.

Only problem: It still left him trailing the best figure skater of his generation.

“I’m coming in as the favorite, but being the favorite is one thing; actually earning it under pressure is another,” Malinin said. “I don’t take it for granted that I’m getting the gold, of course. I still have to put in the work for the long program.”

AP National Writer Howard Fendrich contributed to this report.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Adam Siao Him Fa of France competes during the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Yuma Kagiyama of Japan reacts to his scores after competing during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Yuma Kagiyama of Japan competes during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

More than two dozen privacy and advocacy organizations are calling on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to remove a network of covert license plate readers deployed across Southern California that the groups believe feed data into a controversial U.S. Border Patrol predictive domestic intelligence program that scans the country's roadways for suspicious travel patterns.

"We ask that your administration investigate and release the relevant permits, revoke them, and initiate the removal of these devices," read the letter sent Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Imperial Valley Equity and Justice and other nonprofits.

An Associated Press investigation published in November revealed that the U.S. Border Patrol, an agency under U.S. Customs and Border Protection, had hidden license plate readers in ordinary traffic safety equipment. The data collected by the Border Patrol plate readers was then fed into a predictive intelligence program monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.

AP obtained land use permits from Arizona showing that the Border Patrol went to great lengths to conceal its surveillance equipment in that state, camouflaging it by placing it inside orange and yellow construction barrels dotting highways.

The letter said the groups' researchers have identified a similar network of devices in California, finding about 40 license plate readers in San Diego and Imperial counties, both of which border Mexico. More than two dozen of the plate readers identified by the groups were hidden in construction barrels.

They could not determine of the ownership of every device, but the groups said in the letter that they obtained some permits from the California Department of Transportation, showing both the Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration had applied for permission to place readers along state highways. DEA shares its license plate reader data with Border Patrol, documents show.

The letter cited the AP's reporting, which found that Border Patrol uses a network of cameras to scan and record vehicle license plate information. An algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Agents appeared to be looking for vehicles making short trips to the border region, claiming that such travel is indicative of potential drug or human smuggling.

Federal agents in turn sometimes refer drivers they deem suspicious to local law enforcement who make a traffic stop citing a reason like speeding or lane change violations. Drivers often have no idea they have been caught up in a predictive intelligence program being run by a federal agency.

The AP identified at least two cases in which California residents appeared to have been caught up in the Border Patrol's surveillance of domestic travel patterns. In one 2024 incident described in court documents, a Border Patrol agent pulled over the driver of a Nissan Altima based in part on vehicle travel data showing that it took the driver six hours to travel the approximately 50 miles between the U.S.-Mexican border and Oceanside, California, where the agent had been on patrol.

“This type of delay in travel after crossing the International Border from Mexico is a common tactic used by persons involved in illicit smuggling,” the agent wrote in a court document.

In another case, Border Patrol agents said in a court document in 2023 they detained a woman at an internal checkpoint because she had traveled a circuitous route between Los Angeles and Phoenix. In both cases, law enforcement accused the drivers of smuggling immigrants in the country unlawfully and were seeking to seize their property or charge them with a crime.

The intelligence program, which has existed under administrations of both parties, has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers since the AP revealed its existence last year.

The California Department of Transportation and the office of Newsom, a Democrat, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Courts have generally upheld license plate reader collection on public roads but have curtailed warrantless government access to other kinds of persistent tracking data that might reveal sensitive details about people's movements, such as GPS devices or cellphone location data. Some scholars and civil libertarians argues that large-scale collection systems like plate readers might be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.

“Increasingly, courts have recognized that the use of surveillance technologies can violate the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Although this area of law is still developing, the use of LPRs and predictive algorithms to track and flag individuals’ movements represents the type of sweeping surveillance that should raise constitutional concerns,” the organizations wrote.

CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but previously said the agency uses plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and their use of the technology is “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.”

DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Burke reported from San Francisco. Tau reported from Washington.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.

FILE - A license plate reader used by U.S. Border Patrol is hidden in a traffic cone while capturing passing vehicles on AZ Highway 85, Oct. 21, 2025, in Gila Bend, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)