Surya Bonaly's 1998 Olympic Backflip Tops Later Attempts in Video

In the long program at the White Ring in Nagano, Surya Bonaly threw herself into a flip the rules did not allow. She landed on one blade. In the air she held a split. The edge held.

She is the only woman to land a backflip in competition.

Ladies’ singles at the 1998 Winter Olympics ran from 18 to 20 February at the White Ring. Tara Lipinski won gold. Michelle Kwan took silver. Chen Lu earned bronze. Bonaly finished tenth. She had already fallen. She was skating on an injured foot. Because the backflip was illegal under the rules then in force, it received no credit in her technical merit score. She was the fourth person to land the element in competition and the only skater to finish it on one blade with a mid-air split. The move is now colloquially called a Bonaly.

That landing still moves on its own. On YouTube, the channel One More Edge sets the Nagano backflip beside later attempts by Eloisa Merino Sola and titles the cut with a flat claim that the original will always be the best.

Bonaly was born Claudine on 15 December 1973 in Nice, France. Suzanne and Georges Bonaly adopted her at eight months. Of the children left behind by other families, Suzanne Bonaly said, “they are the babies no one takes.”

Didier Gailhaguet coached her through the seasons that built the public record. In 1995 Johnette Howard, writing in Sports Illustrated, called Suzanne Bonaly “domineering” and wrote that she held “near-total control” of her daughter’s training and career. In 2019, on BBC’s Outlook Podcast, Surya Bonaly said they had been “almost homeless.”

She reached Nagano already loaded with titles. She was a three-time World silver medalist from 1993 to 1995. She won the European championship five times, from 1991 through 1995. She took the World Junior title in 1991. Between 1989 and 1997 she became French national champion nine times.

The backflip she showed the Olympic crowd had already appeared in public, outside the scored program. At the 1990 Goodwill Games she attempted a quadruple jump and landed on two feet. She still left with her first bronze medal at an international competition. During the awards ceremony she performed a backflip for the audience. Randy Harvey of the Los Angeles Times called her free skating program easily the most ambitious of the competition and noted that she was the only woman there to try a quad.