Surya Bonaly is a retired French figure skater most well known for the signature one-footed backflip she would occasionally perform in competitions, choosing to take the mandatory deduction she would receive for doing so. Backflips had been banned since 1976, due to the danger associated with performing them on the ice. Bonaly only performed the backflip in competitions where she had already made mistakes in her program, and knew she stood no chance of winning, as a way to excite the audience.
While Bonaly’s backflip is certainly impressive, it is curious that the backflip seems to be all she is remembered for. She was the first woman to ever attempt quadruple jumps, even landing four, albeit underrotated, during her career. Most women competed with six jumps, while Bonaly would jump eight to nine. She was the first woman to attempt multiple triple-triple combinations in a single program, and introduced multiple new jump combinations to women’s figure skating. Bonaly pushed figure skating technically, but receives little to no acknowledgement for doing so.
In figure skating, white petite young girls are considered the ideal ‘ice princesses’, leaving little room for black women like Bonaly. Although she would improve her artistry over the years, she consistently received lower artistic marks than other skaters. Over the course of multiple competitions, despite her elevated technical content, Bonaly lost to younger, thinner, and, most importantly, white, skaters with lower technical content, although arguably sometimes higher artistic content. Since Bonaly’s retirement in 1998, few black women have found success in the world of figure skating. Only two black women have won medals at the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships, and, at the last Winter Olympics there were no black figure skaters representing the United States, and only two across all countries.
Ultimately, Bonaly’s career was overwhelmingly successful. She won the European Championships five times, medaled at three world championships, skated at three different Olympics, and won the French National Championships ten times. Still, her achievements and impact on the sport are not often discussed beyond her signature backflip. In order for figure skating to develop into an inclusive sport for grown women, all grown women, skaters like Surya Bonaly must be given credit for their contributions to the sport, by both the sport’s governing bodies, and the figure skating community as a whole.