Ilia Malinin Does Not Have a Girlfriend!!!

🔥 Buckle up for a satirical pirouette through the glacial waters of celebrity dating news 🧊💔 — because when it comes to Ilia Malinin’s love life, the headlines are about as steamy as a British seaside holiday in February. Which is to say: cold, slightly damp, and everyone involved is mildly disappointed but putting a brave face on it.

The facts, delivered with all the urgency of a delayed Southern Rail announcement: Ilia Malinin does not have a girlfriend. America’s self-anointed “Quad God” — now, following his eighth-place finish at the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics, more accurately the “Quad God Who Had a Bit of a Wobble” — is romantically unattached. Completely. Utterly. With the emotional availability of a self-checkout machine at Sainsbury’s on a Sunday afternoon when the unexpected item alarm is going off and there’s a queue of seven people and the assistant is nowhere to be found. ❄️

The British press, to its credit, covered this story with customary restraint and proportionality — which is to say: not at all, because there was a minor royal doing something marginally peculiar, and that always takes precedence. Prince Andrew could trip over a corgi and knock the Prime Minister down a flight of stairs, and the sidebar would still read: “But is Ilia Malinin secretly dating?” We at The London Prat, however, are nothing if not thorough. Pointlessly, expensively thorough. So here we are.

❄️ “Quad God” Turns Out To Be A Thoroughly Single God

According to People magazine — America’s foremost authority on the inner lives of attractive people who have done nothing wrong — Ilia Malinin has stated, plainly and repeatedly, that he’d “rather skate than date.” Which, if you’ve ever watched British dating television, sounds less like an athletic philosophy and more like what a Love Island contestant says in week one before immediately snogging someone they met by the firepit and crying about it in the beach hut by Thursday.

The young man trains six hours a day, six days a week, attends George Mason University, and is — by his own admission — fully booked. This level of self-discipline is something the British public finds simultaneously admirable and deeply unsettling. We are, after all, a nation that invented the concept of the tea break specifically to avoid doing things for extended periods. Six uninterrupted hours of anything — let alone hurtling across ice attempting to rotate four times before gravity reasserts itself — is frankly alarming to us. We’d need at least three sit-downs, a biscuit, and a brief moan about the weather. 🍵

You can almost hear the Daily Mail preparing a sidebar: “Is Ilia TOO dedicated? Experts weigh in on whether being brilliant at something is actually a cry for help.” Followed by twelve paparazzi photographs of him adjusting his skate laces, captioned with the phrase “haunted look.” The Daily Mail would describe a man eating a sandwich as having a haunted look if it filled the column inches. They once ran six hundred words on a royal touching their own hair.

🐱 His Actual Relationships: Two Cats, Zero Drama, Maximum Dignity

In the glaring absence of a girlfriend, Ilia has confirmed that his primary emotional relationships are with his two cats, Mysti and Miu Miu. This is, without question, the most relatable thing about him — and we are including the quadruple jumps in that comparison, which tells you something quite depressing about the state of modern romance in 2026.

Mysti and Miu Miu have not given interviews. They have not confirmed or denied any rumours. They have not been photographed at a Milanese cat cafe with a South Korean Olympian. They have, apparently, simply sat at home being cats — which, in the context of the 2026 Winter Olympics celebrity gossip cycle, constitutes a masterclass in personal brand management. Cats Protection has not yet issued a statement, but we imagine they’d approve wholeheartedly, possibly with a small commemorative leaflet.

A brief interpretive tour of how Britain’s nations would react to Ilia’s romantic situation:

In England: “He’s focused on his career” — said admiringly, over a pint, by someone who is also absolutely not dating anyone and gave up pretending otherwise around 2023. A pause. A long sip. “Good lad.”

In Scotland: “Aye, sensible.” Full stop. No further analysis required, requested, or welcome. Anyone who wants further analysis is welcome to get tae.

In Wales: A lengthy choral piece is already being composed. It will be performed at the National Eisteddfod. The cats will feature prominently in the third verse. It will be beautiful, slightly melancholy, and run to forty-five minutes minimum.

In Northern Ireland: “Has he tried being more craic?” Followed immediately by an invitation to a barbecue that is somehow also a deeply layered political statement. 🍀

💘 The Olympic Village Soap Opera: A British Recap For A Baffled Nation

Now then. The internet — which approaches celebrity singledom the way the Sun approaches a minor royal indiscretion: with absolutely no intention of letting it go and a frankly impressive commitment to fabricating implications from nothing — has been constructing elaborate romantic narratives around the lad since approximately the moment he landed his first jump in Milan.

Romantic Candidate Number One: Anna Sretenski, fellow figure skater, also descended from an Olympic skating family, which naturally meant fans decided they were basically already engaged and had probably picked out curtains. Neither party has confirmed anything. Neither party has said much publicly on the matter at all. This, naturally, has been interpreted as definitive confirmation by approximately forty thousand people on Reddit who have constructed timelines, analysed Instagram comment response speeds to the nearest second, and drawn what can only be described as relationship flowcharts. The BBC Sport desk has wisely said nothing. This is the correct response. 📊

Romantic Candidate Number Two — and this is where it gets properly daft, in the finest British tradition of things getting properly daft — Newsweek reports that Malinin was spotted at a cat cafe in Milan with South Korean figure skater Lee Hae-in. Lee Hae-in coincidentally also finished eighth in her event — making them the most symmetrically underperforming potential couple in Olympic history, which is either romantic destiny or a statistical joke depending on your philosophical outlook.

Evidence: They were at a cat cafe. Simultaneously. In the same city where they were both already competing at the Olympics.
Fan conclusion: They are basically engaged. Someone is already writing the fan fiction.
Ilia’s actual stated position: Single. Has said so. Multiple times. On record. With words.
Internet’s response to Ilia’s actual stated position: “He would say that, wouldn’t he.” 🐱🥇

At this point the cats have more credible relationship evidence than any of these theories. Mysti and Miu Miu share a home with the man. They know things. They’re not saying. Smart cats.

📊 Cold Hard Numbers From A Nation That Prefers A Spreadsheet To A Feeling

The British, as a people, are more comfortable with data than with emotions. Here, then, is the statistical picture, presented in a format our readers can digest without needing a lie-down:

In the world of elite competitive figure skating — where one fall costs you gold and one distraction costs you a World Championship — Malinin’s priority list runs as follows: skates, training, university, cats, sleep (if time permits), and then somewhere beneath “remembering to eat a proper meal,” romance. Honestly, who among us can judge? You don’t land a quadruple axel by being emotionally available on a Tuesday evening. You land it by being slightly unreasonable about commitment to a single purpose. The British built an empire on exactly that logic. We’re not saying it worked out well for everyone involved, but the principle stands. 🧊👑

🤔 Five Things The British Press Is Too Polite To Point Out (We Are Not)

1. The cat cafe visit is doing a phenomenal amount of heavy lifting. Going to a cat cafe in Milan with someone during the Winter Olympics — a city where you both happen to already be competing — is being treated by fans as compelling romantic evidence. By this logic, every British person who has ever shared a Pret A Manger table with a stranger is in a deeply committed relationship and really should have arranged to meet the parents by now. The man got a coffee near some cats. Calm down.

2. He finished eighth and the British public has already moved on. The British sporting public has a finely calibrated instinct for when to care about winter sports. That instinct activates precisely once every four years, peaks violently during the curling, generates several surprised tweets about how good curling actually is, and then goes immediately back to sleep until football resumes. Ilia Malinin’s love life is competing for column inches with Strictly casting rumours, and it is not winning.

3. “Rather skate than date” is the least British sentence ever constructed. A British person in Ilia’s position, asked about their romantic life in a national magazine, would say something along the lines of: “Oh, I mean, I don’t know, maybe eventually, if it wasn’t too much bother, it’s hard to say really, we’ll see, I suppose.” Then change the subject to how the training facilities could do with better heating. Then go home. Then not mention it again until 2031.

4. The internet has romantically reframed two eighth-place finishes. In what is either the most touching or the most statistically dubious piece of romantic reasoning in recent memory, fans have concluded that Ilia and Lee Hae-in’s mutual failure to medal is the foundation of a great love story. Relationship researchers might call this “bonding over shared adversity.” The rest of us, with affection, call it “finishing eighth together and then visiting some cats.”

5. He is twenty-one years old. He is twenty-one. He trains six hours a day. He attends university. He competes at the highest level in the world at one of the most technically demanding sports in existence. He has two cats. The question is not why he doesn’t have a girlfriend. The question is when he finds time to sleep. The NHS recommends seven to nine hours per night. We have strong and entirely unsubstantiated suspicions that Ilia Malinin is not getting seven to nine hours. Someone check on him. Probably the cats have noticed. 😴

🗞️ How The British Tabloids Would Have Covered This Story

Had Ilia Malinin been British — say, a lad from Wolverhampton who’d somehow mastered the quadruple Lutz while working part-time at a garden centre — the tabloid coverage would have been spectacular in its excess. A rough reconstruction:

The Sun: “QUAD LONELY: Ice lad Ilia, 21, hasn’t ‘dated’ since, well, ever — exclusively revealed by someone who definitely knows him.” Accompanied by a photograph of him looking pensive that was actually taken during warmups and has been slightly darkened for dramatic effect.

The Daily Mail: “Is Ilia Malinin’s SINGLEDOM a warning sign? We asked seven relationship experts, three of his former schoolmates, a woman who once sat near him on a train, and his cats’ vet.” Sidebar: analysis of whether his mother’s Instagram activity suggests she’s hoping for grandchildren. Comments section: a war.

The Mirror: “Exclusive: Ilia’s heartbreak secret — ‘Skating is my one true love’ says ice hero in candid chat he definitely had with us and we have notes.” Price: £1.20. Worth it: debatable.

The Guardian: A 4,000-word essay on what Ilia Malinin’s relationship status reveals about late-stage capitalism, the commodification of athletic masculinity, and the male gaze in competitive figure skating. No photographs. One large pull quote that raises more questions than it answers. Comments: 847, mostly off-topic, three genuinely brilliant, the rest a mystery.

The Telegraph: “The young man who’d rather skate: a profile.” Tasteful. Respectful. Mentions his cats with appropriate British warmth. Behind a paywall that costs more per month than the cats’ food combined.

📸 Final Verdict From These Shores

Here is the situation, as best we can reconstruct it from this side of the Atlantic: Ilia Malinin is a 21-year-old American of extraordinary talent who went to Milan, had a difficult free skate, finished eighth, visited a cat cafe, went home to his cats, and is single. He has said he is single. His Instagram contains no romantic evidence whatsoever. His cats are called Mysti and Miu Miu and are reportedly fine.

The internet has decided this is insufficient and has accordingly constructed an entire romantic universe from these meagre materials, with the industry and creative commitment of people who should almost certainly be writing novels but have instead chosen to analyse Instagram like-patterns with the intensity normally reserved for Old Masters restoration.

We at The London Prat salute them. We do not share their conclusions. But we salute the commitment. In a world that often feels short of passion, there is something genuinely moving about caring this deeply about whether a young man from Virginia went on a date near some cats in Milan.

In the end, Ilia Malinin’s love life is the figure skating equivalent of a British weather forecast: technically interesting to a dedicated few, endlessly speculated upon, ultimately unpredictable, and likely to result in everyone getting slightly wetter than anticipated. He’ll figure it out. He’s 21. He’s got time. The cats will wait. They always do.

Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! 🎭💔

Ilia Malinin, 21, is an American figure skater from Northern Virginia who entered the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics as the heavy gold medal favourite, widely expected to dominate the men’s singles event after earning the nickname “Quad God” for his mastery of quadruple jumps. He finished eighth in the free skate final — won by Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov in a significant upset — after a fall derailed what had been a strong campaign. Prior to and during the Games, Malinin confirmed to People magazine that he is single and focused entirely on his skating career, a statement that promptly sent online fan communities into sustained romantic speculation involving fellow skaters Anna Sretenski and South Korean Olympian Lee Hae-in, with whom he was photographed at a Milanese cat cafe. His two cats, Mysti and Miu Miu, were unavailable for comment and are believed to be handling everything well.

Alan Nafzger

Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: editor@prat.uk