People are being so weird about Ilia Malinin performing the Bonaly at the Olympics.
Like I keep seeing people say "it's racism that this move is celebrated when a White boy does it but derided when a Black girl did it" and... Yeah 100% it was fucking racist how Surya Bonaly was treated at the Olympics but that's not Ilia Malinin's fault, he wasn't even born yet?
And I keep seeing people saying "how could everyone forget about Bonaly?" but like. Idk, I googled "Ilia Malinin backflip" and of the top five articles I got, four of them did in fact talk pretty significantly about Bonaly. The other one didn't talk much about Malinin's backflip at all, it talked about the components of his entire program. People aren't forgetting her.
The backflip wasn't banned because Bonaly did it. She did it because it was banned. The judges had made it clear that they were not going to judge her fairly because they were racist shitheads. She did the backflip to prove to the world she was the superior athlete in defiance of the rules. If the rules weren't going to be applied fairly to her, why should she follow them at all? Why not just do whatever the fuck she wanted to put on the best show she could? And that's what she did.
And then the rules changed and this Olympics is the first one since the rule change, and Malinin did the newly legal move, and that seems fine to me? But some people seem to think it's not fine?
I guess I just don't understand what people want to have happen instead. If you're upset that the rules changed and Malinin did the backflip and that people are excited about it, what did you want instead? Should the backflip have stayed illegal? Should it have become legal but then we should all be assholes to someone who does it like people were assholes to Bonaly? Idk how either of those options would bring her justice.
She was robbed and we can't change it. We can't go back in time and change that for her. It seems to me that recognizing that the move is a valid feat of athleticism that can be included in an Olympic program is a recognition of her legacy, not a derision of it. It seems to me that celebrating someone who can pull the move off now legally is a celebration of Bonaly's legacy. She should have gotten to do that, but she didn't, but now someone can, and we can celebrate that for both of them.
One of the authors of the articles I read even called Bonaly to ask her what she thinks. She's happy to see her backflip performed on Olympic ice. She said: "I broke ice for other skaters. Now everything is different."
I want justice for her. We can't go back in time and give her what she deserved. But I do think making her move legal so that maybe it can be seen and celebrated regularly is a little step toward justice, not away from it.
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