An excerpt from Atlanta Black Star -
‘No One Else Could Do It’: Ice Skater Surya Bonaly Hits Back as Ilia Malinin Gets Olympic Glory — and the Medal — for What Derailed Her Career
By Angelina
Figure skating fans will not allow history to be rewritten during the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy. Headlines are buzzing over the acrobatic ice skating stunt that helped to push U.S. athlete Ilia “Quad God” Malinin into uncharted gold medal success.
The 21-year-old became the first person to victoriously complete an in-competition backflip and land on one foot during his free skate routine on Feb. 8. But in the last few days, viral clips of his history-making accomplishment sparked fanfare and debates.
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| Olympian Surya Bonaly speaks after another ice skater was given a medal for a flip that she was punished for over 20 years ago. (Photos by Simon Bruty/Anychance/Getty Images; suryabonaly1/Instagram; Andy Cheung/Getty Images) |
One viewer gushed, “I know his performance today had a slight misstep, but this dude did a backflip and landed on ONE skate!! He’s 21 years old so we will get to see him for a ling time. Ilia Malinin is amazing.”
That reaction and others like it, though, were greeted with reminders of the legend who made the flip iconic. The high-stakes maneuver was banned 30 years ago and only became a legal move in 2024.
The formerly forbidden stunt, known as “the Bonaly flip,” was named after Surya Bonaly, a skater who competed for France in the 1998 Nagano Games.
The performance was a final fête marking her retirement from competition and years of being penalized and overlooked for her transformative and athletic approach to the sport.
Judges docked points from Bonaly for deploying the incredible trick in her professional finale, dropping her from sixth place to tenth. She told reporters that her goal was to “show the judges — who don’t appreciate what I do — just what I can do.”
