- Ilia Malinin landed a one-footed backflip at the 2026 Winter Games, helping Team USA win gold.
- The backflip was banned in 1977 but was performed by Surya Bonaly at the 1998 Olympics, who was penalized for the move.
- The International Skating Union lifted the ban on backflips in 2024, allowing them in choreographic sequences.
- Bonaly, a Black skater in a predominantly white sport, feels her legacy is now receiving proper recognition.
MILAN — When U.S. figure skater Ilia Malinin completed a one-footed backflip in the men’s free skate in Sunday’s team event, the crowd at Milano Ice Skating Arena audibly gasped before erupting in cheers.
Malinin’s gravity-defying move capped a mesmerizing program that propelled Team USA to its second consecutive team gold medal. He became the first skater to land a one-blade backflip on Olympic ice since France’s Surya Bonaly performed the maneuver at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games.
The backflip has been openly embraced since its return to figure skating in 2024, but it was received much differently three decades ago when Bonaly chose to end her Olympic career on her own terms. The move was banned by the International Skating Union (ISU) in 1977 because it was deemed too dangerous.
But Bonaly did it anyway.
“I had nothing to lose anymore,” Bonaly told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday. ‘I did it because I was an athlete and I wanted to show that I can do that … I left my trademark.’
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U.S. figure skater Terry Kubicka was the first figure skater to land a backflip on two skates at the 1976 Innsbruck Winter Olympics, prompting the ISU to list the move as an illegal element the following year. An American may have debuted the backflip and the young U.S. prodigy revived it, but it was Bonaly who challenged rules and pushed boundaries as a Black woman in a predominantly white sport that never fully embraced her.
Bonaly was often labeled a rebel, rather than a trailblazer as racism impacted her career. Yet, Bonaly’s lasting legacy is finally receiving the recognition that has long been denied following Malinin’s Olympic performance.
‘People have a more open mind now and are more accepting of others who do things differently,’ Bonaly said. ‘It’s even nicer now because I can feel that it’s been well digested by everyone … if it’s good, it’s good and that’s it, whether you are black, white, Chinese or Asian.’
Bonaly’s iconic backflip at the 1998 Nagano Olympics was completely spontaneous.
She was recovering from a right Achilles tendon rupture suffered two years prior and a pulled muscle ahead of the women’s singles free skate rendered her unable to complete her complex jumps. Bonaly knew she wasn’t going to make the podium in her third and final Games, but she nonetheless wanted to leave her mark on the ice.
‘I was not fully at my potential … I was just in bad shape,’ Bonaly recalled to USA TODAY Sports. ‘If I cannot do any more triple (jump) combinations or something like that, it’s my last competition coming up right here. And I’m like, I don’t have much time to think about it, I have to do now because I’m not going to have another chance.’
Bonaly knew she would be penalized for the maneuver, but after years of seeking approval from judges and navigating the moving goalposts that seemed to apply only to her, she decided to fully embrace her own identity. She wanted to make a statement and prove what she was capable of. Bonaly wanted to entertain the crowd.
‘I didn’t know what kind of penalty I was going to have,’ said Bonaly, who remembered thinking she ‘could have maybe (been) fully banned and have the judges put a zero.’ Although the backflip made her wildly popular among her fellow athletes within the Olympic Village, the judges were not happy with her. She dropped from sixth place after the short program to 10th after the free skate, but she said she has ‘no regrets.’
‘She thumbed her nose at the panel (of judges) a little bit, but at the same time, she gave the audience something extremely memorable,’ U.S. Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton said on a 2019 episode of Netflix’s ‘Losers’ docuseries. ‘There were a lot of people that placed above her, but I don’t remember a lot of those.’
Bonaly has never met Malinin, yet she first heard of him 10 years ago after running into his parents at the 2016 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Minnesota, where Bonaly now resides as a skating teacher. Malinin comes from a long bloodline of figure skaters. His parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, were both former Olympic skaters for Uzbekistan.
Malinina finished in eighth place at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, two spots ahead of Bonaly.
‘I remember his mom saying, ‘Oh, I have a son, he skates a little bit actually. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s cool,” Bonaly recalled. ‘I didn’t know one day that little kid … would actually be a wolf engine.’
The clip of Bonaly’s 1998 Olympic backflip has been introduced to new audiences ever since Malinin completed the move at the Games for the first time since the ISU lifted the ban in 2024.
The backflip may be added to a skater’s choreographic sequence to showcase their artistic side and is judged in the component scores, but the element itself is not assigned a value, said USA TODAY reporter Christine Brennan and Olympic champion Brian Boitano, hosts of the ‘Milan Magic’ Podcast. (Malinin’s signature ‘Raspberry Twist,’ an acrobatic jump used to connect moves, also doesn’t earn him any bonus points.)
‘I decided to put it in my free skate, because it fits the music really well,’ Malinin said in October 2024 after the ban was lifted. ‘It gets that audience applause, feels really suspenseful and I really just like doing it.’
Bonaly applauds Malinin’s commitment to entertaining audiences, which she says is integral to growing the sport. She referred to him as a ‘warrior’ on the ice and ‘the best skater in the whole world.’
‘This Olympics is so entertaining … when I sit down and watch on a couch, I have my heart go boom, boom, boom,’ Bonaly said. ‘In skating, we cannot restrain athletes to just go forward … I think it’s important for our sports to be able to have people enjoy watching it.’
While everyone will be on the lookout for for Malinin’s backflip in his men’s singles free skate on Friday, Bonaly is most excited for his seven quadruple jumps, which earned Malinin the nickname ‘Quad God.’
‘The backflip sometimes is not the most difficult,’ Bonaly said. ‘I want him to do a perfect quad so nobody can say, ‘Oh yeah, but it’s (underrated) …’ I’m sick and tired of people already try to have a little something negative to just add. Especially for people who cannot do it, it’s even worse.’
As Bonaly reflects on her career that spanned over a decade, she believes she was simply was born ahead of her time. She said the current generation of skating ‘would’ve suited more my personality’ as skaters continue expand what is possible on ice. She hopes to be remembered as more than a one-trick pony, but an athlete who was ‘fully committed to push sports beyond the limits.’
‘I’m also something else besides the backflips. So hopefully people remember me for the rest of my skating,’ said Bonaly, a nine-time French national champion, five-time European Champion and three-time World silver medalist. ‘I took myself from nothing to become where I went, even though I didn’t get the gold medal.’
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