Christy Yamaguchi and Brian Boitano are happy with Ilia Marin’s final skate
Olympic gold medalists Brian Boitano and Kristi Yamaguchi talk about Ilia Marin’s final skate at the Milan-Cortina Olympics.
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- Ilya Marinin landed a one-legged backflip at the 2026 Winter Olympics, helping Team USA win the gold medal.
- Backflips were banned in 1977, but Surya Bonaly performed them at the 1998 Olympics and was given a penalty.
- The International Skating Union lifted its ban on backflips in 2024, allowing them to be performed in choreographed sequences.
- Bonaly, a black skater in a predominantly white sport, feels his accomplishments are now being recognized.
Editor’s note: Follow live Olympic figure skating results and updates from the 2026 Winter Olympics.
milan — When American figure skater Ilia Marin performed a one-legged backflip in the men’s team free skate on Sunday, the crowd at the Milan Ice Skating Arena cheered, then gasped.
Marinin’s gravity-defying move capped an enthralling program that propelled Team USA to its second consecutive team gold medal. He became the first skater to perform a one-blade backflip on Olympic ice since France’s Surya Bonaly performed the technique at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics.
Backflips have been openly embraced since her return to figure skating in 2024, but the reception was very different 30 years ago, when Bonaly voluntarily chose to end her Olympic career. The move was deemed too dangerous and was banned by the International Skating Union (ISU) in 1977.
But Bonaly did it anyway.
“I had nothing left to lose,” Bonaly told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday. “I did it because I was an athlete and I wanted to show that I could do it…I left my trademark behind.”
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American figure skater Terry Kubicka was the first figure skater to land a backflip on two skates at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, leading the ISU to list the move as an illegal element the following year. An American may have debuted the backflip and a young American phenom may have revived it, but it was Bonaly who challenged the rules and pushed the limits as a black woman in a predominantly white sport that was never fully accepted.
Bonaly was often labeled a rebel rather than a pioneer, as racism affected her career. But Bonaly’s enduring legacy is finally receiving the recognition it has long been denied following Malinin’s Olympic performance.
“People are now more open-minded and more accepting of others who do things differently,” Bonaly says. “Now it’s even better because I feel like it’s well-represented by everyone. Whether it’s black, white, Chinese, Asian, if it’s good, it’s good and that’s it.”
Bonaly’s iconic backflip at the 1998 Nagano Olympics was completely spontaneous.
She was recovering from a torn right Achilles tendon suffered two years ago, but suffered a muscle strain before the women’s singles free skate that left her unable to complete complex jumps. Bonaly knew she wouldn’t be on the podium in her third and final competition, but she still wanted to make her mark on the ice.
“I wasn’t playing to my full potential…I just wasn’t feeling well,” Bonaly told USA TODAY Sports. “If I can’t do any more triple (jump) combinations or anything like that, this last competition will be my last. And I thought, I don’t have much time to think about it, I won’t have another chance, so I have to do it now.”
Bonaly knew she would be punished for her actions, but after years of seeking approval from judges and overcoming moving goalposts that seemed to apply only to her, she decided to fully embrace her identity. She wanted to make a statement and prove herself. Bonaly wanted to entertain the audience.
“I didn’t know what kind of penalty I was going to get,” Bonaly said, remembering thinking, “Maybe I’ll get a full suspension and the judge will give me zero points.” This backflip made her very popular among her fellow athletes in the Olympic Village, but the judges were not satisfied with her. Although he fell from 6th place after the short program to 10th place after the free skate, he said, “I have no regrets.”
“She thumbed her nose at the (jury) panel a little bit, but at the same time gave the audience something very memorable,” U.S. Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton said in a 2019 episode of the Netflix documentary series “Losers.” “There were many people above her, but I don’t remember much of them.”
Bonaly has never met Marinin, but first learned about him 10 years ago after a chance encounter with his parents at the 2016 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Minnesota. Bonaly currently lives there as a skating teacher. Marinin comes from a long lineage of figure skaters. His parents, Tatyana Marinina and Roman Skolniakov, were both former Olympic skaters from Uzbekistan.
Marinina finished eighth at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, two places ahead of Bonaly.
“I remember his mother saying, ‘Oh, I have a son who actually skates a little bit. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,'” Bonaly recalls. “I never thought that one day that little kid would actually become a wolf engine.”
Clips of Bonaly’s 1998 Olympic backflip have been introduced to a new audience since Marinin completed the backflip at the Olympics for the first time since the ISU lifted the ban in 2024.
Backflips are sometimes added to skaters’ choreography sequences to showcase their artistic side, and are evaluated with component scores, but the elements themselves are not assigned a value, said USA TODAY correspondent Christine Brennan and Olympic champion Brian Boitano, hosts of the podcast “Milan Magic.” (Malinin’s signature “Raspberry Twist,” an acrobatic jump used to link the movement, also does not earn bonus points.)
“I decided to include it in the free skate because it fits the music very well,” Malinin said in October 2024, after the ban was lifted. “The audience applauds and it feels very suspenseful and I really like doing it.”
Bonaly praised Marinin’s efforts to entertain the audience, which she says is essential to the growth of the sport. She called him a “warrior” on the ice and “the best skater in the whole world.”
“This Olympics is so interesting…I’m sitting on the couch watching it and my heart is pounding, boom, boom,” Bonaly said. “In skating, you can’t limit an athlete’s ability to move forward. I think it’s important for people to have fun watching our sport.”
While all eyes are on Mullin’s backflips in Friday’s men’s single free skate, Bonaly is most excited about the seven quadruple jumps that earned Mullin the nickname “God of the Quads.”
“Sometimes backflips aren’t the most difficult thing to do,” Bonaly says. “I want him to do a perfect quad, so I’m tired of people trying to add little negativity so no one can say, ‘Oh, yeah, but that’s (underrated)…’ It’s even worse, especially for people who can’t do it.”
Looking back on his career spanning more than a decade, Bonaly believes he was simply born ahead of his time. As skaters continue to expand what’s possible on the ice, she said the current generation of skating “would have been a better fit for my personality.” She wants to be remembered not as a one-trick pony, but as an athlete who “worked hard to push the limits of her sport.”
“I have something else besides backflips, so I hope people remember me for the rest of the skates,” said Bonaly, a nine-time French national champion, five-time European champion and three-time world silver medalist. “Even if I didn’t win the gold medal, I built myself up from nothing and achieved my goal.”
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