Rewriting history
On Surya Bonaly’s Olympic legacy
Anything that gets Novak Djokovic jumping out of his chair, open-mouthed and applauding in disbelief has to be exceptional. It’s also likely to get a lot of attention too. Enter Ilia Malinin, the star of the USA’s figure skating team.
Malinin, 21, is the men’s gold medal favourite at the Milan-Cortina Games, who has already won gold in the team event, and is a bonafide superstar (he is nicknamed the “Quad God” for his ability to complete quadruple jumps).
He is also being hailed as a history-maker for landing the first legal one-footed backflip in Olympic skating. “Legal” being the operative word, as the move was banned for more than 50 years.
American Terry Kubicka sparked the ban in 1976, after he landed a two-footed version at the Innsbruck Olympic Games. It was deemed too dangerous by the figure skating authorities at the time, but that ban was overturned in 2024, in part to try to make the sport more exciting for audiences. Hence Malinin’s decision to reintroduce the skill at these Olympics.
The awe and adulation being sent Malinin’s way is well deserved. Landing that backflip under such pressure was an impressive feat, as is leaving Djokovic lost for words in the arena. But I still wanted to highlight, for anyone who doesn’t know this bit of Olympic trivia, that it was actually a woman who truly made history with this skill on the ice nearly 30 years ago.
France’s Surya Bonaly is a figure skating icon. She was a child prodigy, made her Olympic debut in 1992 at 18 years old at a home Games, and was one of the sport’s true stars throughout the 1990s. She also was the first to land a one-footed backflip at an Olympics, when it was a forbidden jump.
Bonaly’s story is truly remarkable. As a Black woman in an overwhelmingly white and intensely conservative sport, Bonaly would already be considered a trailblazer for merely competing in top-level figure skating at the time. But her gymnastics background also meant she brought a brave and athletic tumbling ability and style to the ice which set her apart from her peers.
She experienced racial microaggressions throughout her career, with commentators calling her “exotic” or “mysterious”, and she was penalised for lack of artistry, even as she attempted jumps which were unheard of for women skaters at the time.
At the World Championships in 1994, the crowd booed her and the media accused her of throwing a temper tantrum when she took off her silver medal on the podium, after her near-flawless, technical programme was deemed inferior to the artistry of Japan’s Yuka Sato. “As a Black athlete, we had to do more than good, my job was to be impeccable,” Bonaly said in a recent Netflix documentary, Losers.
During her career she earned three World silver medals, as well as five European titles, but never had Olympic podium success (her best finish was 4th in 1994, after she fell on a triple Lutz jump).
In 1998, Bonaly knew she was at her third and final Olympics and struggling with an injury when she went out to perform her final routine. She knew she couldn’t complete her most technical programme, had no hope of a medal, and it was either go out with a whimper or in a blaze of glory. She chose the latter, and defiantly landed a spontaneous one-footed backflip on the ice – even in the knowledge it was against the rules.
“I wanted to leave a trademark,” she later said. “I had a standing ovation before I ended my programme, people loved it.” Except the judges that is, who gave her a deduction. She finished in 10th, but that backflip gave her a place in history. It was also a final two fingers up to a subjective scoring system that never valued her skillset, and a sport where she had repeatedly been othered during her career.
Speaking on Monday to the Associated Press, Bonaly said she was happy to see the backflip at the Olympics again thanks to Malinin and that, in her own case, she was simply “born too early”.
Athletes who take risks or defy convention in sport are either lauded or derided. They’re seen as courageous pioneers or as simply deluded. Based on the way she was penalised for her innovative style, Bonaly fell into the latter category during her career. It’s only as the sport has evolved that her brilliance has been belatedly recognised.
We’ve seen that full spectrum of reaction to Olympian Lindsey Vonn this week too, who crashed in the downhill ski competition on Saturday, mere days after rupturing the ACL in her left knee.
It was terrible luck for Vonn, 41, who spent upwards of five years on the sidelines, rehabbing a partial knee replacement and injury setbacks, while never giving up on her goal of competing at a fifth Olympics. It’s why, with nine days to go until the Olympics and with a newly ruptured ACL, she thought sod it, I’m going to compete anyway.
Vonn is a woman who has truly transcended her sport, so this decision became the talk of these Olympics. There was already so much hype and attention on this last appearance at the Games for the former champion, so for her to do it with a serious injury captured the world’s attention.
In the end, this incredible comeback story was crushed within 13 seconds. Vonn’s arm caught on a gate, she crashed out, was airlifted off the mountain, and had to endure two operations for a fracture in her left leg. She has since said the crash and injury had nothing to do with her ACL tear and that she has “no regrets”.
“It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairytale, it was just life,” Vonn wrote in a statement. “I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it.
“It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport. And similar to ski racing, we take risks in life. We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken. Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have. But that is also the beauty of life; we can try. I hope if you take away anything from my journey it’s that you all have the courage to dare greatly. Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying. I tried. I dreamt. I jumped.”
It’s a beautiful sentiment, though I’ve got to say the coverage of her screaming in pain on the mountain was grim viewing. Many have questioned whether it was right to normalise or glorify an athlete’s decision to compete while seriously injured. Others went further and said she should not have been allowed to compete because of the danger she posed to herself.
I think those arguments forget there is a woman, a person, at the centre of it all. They take away Vonn’s autonomy, her freedom to take the risk she wants to take – the risk athletes so often have to take in the height of competition, to be truly great. That doesn’t always involve injury or putting your body on the line, but in a sport like downhill skiing, there’s always real dangerous risk at play amid the rewards.
This time, it didn’t pan out for Vonn, but I hate seeing the “I told you so” brigade reacting to this. Lucy Bronze was widely applauded last summer for competing with a fractured tibia during the Lionesses’ European title run. If they had lost, would Bronze have been branded as irresponsible or even stupid? You can’t just support gutsy decisions when they end in success. That’s what makes them gutsy – they could well end in disaster.
Let’s not forget, Vonn remains the first American woman to win Olympic gold in her event, a two-time Olympic bronze medallist, two-time world champion and one of only six women to have won World Cup races in all five disciplines of alpine skiing. She’s also had more severe sports injuries than your average person. I think she’s more than capable of making an informed choice about her own career – much more so than any commentator or keyboard warrior, that’s for sure.
While their experiences are worlds and decades apart from one another, Vonn’s and Bonaly’s stories hold parallels for me. Both are women who took charge of their own destiny in the competitive arena and split public opinion in the process. Though they left without their respective dream results, I think they should be admired for their fearlessness more than anything.
Throughout Bonaly’s career, people questioned who was really in charge – from her original coach Didier Gailhaguet, who fuelled sensationalist stories about her, to her mother Suzanne, who became her coach and was said to be highly strict and controlling.
But Bonaly was no passive bystander. Her iconic backflip was the most heart-stopping, eye-catching indication that, on that ice rink, Bonaly was firmly in the driving seat of her own story – regardless of judging panels or podium places.
To me, that attitude towards sport is worth celebrating and remembering.
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Molly x