Forbes
The 21-year-old “Quad God” is favored to win in Milan with a program once thought to be impossible, but the highest-paid skater at the Winter Games isn’t in it just for medals and money—he wants to be like The Rock.
During the lead-up to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, NBC asked Ilia Malinin to appear in a cross-promotional commercial re-creating a scene from the Universal movie How To Train Your Dragon. For the 21-year-old figure skating phenom, who carries the movie’s branded keychain with him everywhere and calls his plushie of one of its characters his “spirit animal,” it was a no-brainer.
But over the course of the day, what excited him more was getting a glimpse behind the scenes of a television production for the first time. His marketing agent, Sheryl Shade, remembers Malinin turning to her at one point with wide eyes. “I want to do this,” he said.
It’s a phrase Shade has heard often since she started working with Malinin a year and a half ago, when the then-19-year-old, already considered the future face of skating, was first figuring out his ambitions outside of the rink. The answer, Shade soon found out, was everything—television, fashion, videogames, skateboarding and seemingly whatever else he had last tried.
Full article here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2026/02/06/why-olympic-figure-skater-ilia-malinin-is-marketing-gold/
Sports Marketing and Entertainment Management 