February 3, 2018

Born on December 15, 1973 in Nice France, Surya Bonaly is best known for being the ONLY skater, male or female to perform a one foot backflip.

Surya started off as a competitive gymnast at a very young age, but when she was eleven, she began skating. She broke both of her wrists before she learned how to properly fall.

At the height of her career, Surya was continuously criticized for having a style unlike her competitors, other ice skaters. I could tell you all about her performances, but I’ll just stick to the highlights.

This boss of a woman is a three-time world silver medalist, five-time European champion, nine-time French national champion, and the 1991 World Junior Champion.

Now here’s some backstory for you lovely men and women on the backflip in ice skating: At the 1976 Winter Olympics (Side note, the 2018 Winter Olympics start on the 8th of this month. GET PUMPED! ), US men’s figure skater Terry Kubicka, was doing a flying sit spin on a practice rink when his blade hit a plastic pipe and caused a leak. The rink was shut down for 24 hours. Now, while the flying sit spin and a backflip are two completely different moves, the International Skating Union (ISU) decided that backflips were a no go and made them an illegal move. (How dumb.)

So, in 1992 Surya was doing a practice run of her routine and did a backflip. She landed said backflip. A judge told her she was not to do it again. But Surya was basically like, “okay girl, sure.” She didn’t do the backflip but she did attempt a quadruple toe loop during the competition. While she wasn’t able to get the full rotation of the quad, that attempt have her the title of being the FIRST woman to try a quad in competition! And the first man to ever successfully land it had only done so a year before she made her first attempt.

So Surya kept skating, snatching titles and collecting medals and then we get to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan (her third Olympics).

At this program, Surya unfortunately was ranked well behind and knew she would never place for a medal due to an injury she’d sustained two years previous (she ruptured her achilles tendon while performing acrobatics). So Surya sits there and thought, “Ya know what? Ya girl ain’t just going out like this. I’m going to do the routine I want to do, how I want to do it in my free skate. Who gon’ stop me? They’on’t want this smoke.”

And during her free skate, she performed her illegal backflip: a one foot backflip when she also lands on one foot. She nailed it. But the haters a.k.a. the judges didn’t care and gave her a bunch of deductions. But she was happy with her decision, placed 10th in Nagano, and retired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=5mVVy25e-vk

After she retired, Surya Bonaly continued to skate and toured around and did some guest appearances on things. (She was an off screen character on Will & Grace episode “Will on Ice”.)

In Sept 2016, she was coaching Minnesota’s ice skating team, though I’m unsure if she’s still doing that today.

*DISCLAIMER: ALL OF SURYA BONALY’S “THOUGHTS” ARE MY PORTRAYAL*