âSurya Bonaly is a three-time World silver medalist, a five-time European champion, the 1991 World Junior Champion and a nine-time French national champion. She is a former gymnast and the first woman to ever attempt the quadruple toe loop. On top of all of this, she is likely best known for her amazing free skate at the 1998 Winter Olympics, when she completed one bladed back flip. To this day she is the only skater to ever do this - not the only female figure skater, the only figure skater period. There have been 3 other skaters who have done back flips in competition (all men), but she was the only one to land on one blade.
The only thing more bad ass than that is why she did it. As we all know Olympic figure skating can be quite racist and Surya was tired of being given consistently lower scores than her white counterparts, and she wasnât shy about it. She believed that this was exactly why she has been given a low score on her short program earlier in the day, and decided to send the judges a message.
Now back flips are crazy dangerous. If you donât land perfectly you can severely injure yourself, which would sideline any athlete, potentially permanently. In order to discourage athletes from attempting them, they were made illegal in Olympic competition. The official reason they gave is because all jumps must be landed on one blade to be scored and, of course, in order to complete a back flip you must land on both feet.
So not only did she complete an insanely risky and difficult move but when Surya landed her back flip she essentially made it legal, because she was able to do it while still only using one blade. She was daring the judges to try and low ball her. Unfortunately, they still ruled the move was illegal and deducted it against her in her final score. She may have been unable to medal but she got the last laugh. After completing her free skate she turned her back to the judges, showing them just how much their opinions matter. For this, and for everything else, she goes down in history as not only one the greatest figure skaters ever but a true bad ass.â
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