American rising star Ilia Malinin narrowly leads Japanese world champion Shoma Uno in the Grand Prix Final men's competition after becoming the first figure skater to land a quadruple axel in a short program on Thursday.The 19-year-old Malinin, who is aiming for the biggest international title of his career, scored a personal-best 106.90 to lead Uno by 0.88 heading into Saturday's free skate at Beijing's National Indoor Stadium. Japan's Yuma Kagiyama placed third on 103.72 and Kao Miura fourth on 94.86.Malinin, so far the only skater to cleanly land a quad axel in competition, had only prev…READ FULL ARTICLE
