Ilia Malinin made history the last two seasons by landing the most difficult jump in figure skating time after time. This week, he plans to make some more by backflipping on the ice.
Skate America, which runs Friday through Sunday in Allen, Texas, is the first top-level competition of the season and the first of six Grand Prix events leading up to December’s Grand Prix Final.
The Final pits the top six per discipline from the Grand Prix Series, making it an early preview of March’s world championships and, potentially, the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
After an offseason rule change, figure skaters are allowed to perform a backflip without incurring a penalty for the first time since 1976.
SKATE AMERICA: Broadcast Schedule
Malinin, the 19-year-old world champion from Virginia, is seizing the opportunity. He made his competition backflip debut at a lower-level event in Italy last month.
He said last week that he plans to keep it in his free skate at Skate America, where he can become the first skater to land a legal backflip in Grand Prix Series history.
“Doing it at (non-competitive) shows and at my first competition, the crowd really went wild over (the backflip),” Malinin, best known as the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, said last week. “So I think it does add another kind of big, I guess, surprise to the program. It almost gives the same energy as if I were to do a quad jump.”
Dr. Terry Kubicka, a 1976 Olympian who has treated cats and dogs at Four Corners Veterinary Hospital in Concord, California, for the last 36 years, is believed to be the first person to land a backflip in competition.
The idea came from his coach, Evy Scotvold, who previously performed a backflip in show skating. Scotvold taught Kubicka the flip in training by wrapping a beach towel around his waist to help after takeoff.
“Most of the highest (difficulty) jumps were basically triples at that time in ’76, and I was kind of doing all the triples,” Kubicka said. “So my coach was trying to look beyond, to continue the athleticism of the sport.”
Kubicka backflipped in 1976 at the U.S. Championships (which he won), the Innsbruck Olympics (where he placed seventh) and at the world championships in Gothenburg, Sweden (sixth place).
Innsbruck, Austria - 1976: Terry Kubicka competing in the Men’s Free skate event, at the Olympiahalle, 1976 Winter Olympics / XII Olympic Winter Games. (Photo by American Broadcasting Companies via Getty Images)
Terry Kubicka performs a backflip in his free skate at the 1976 Winter Olympics. (ABC via Getty Images)
Kubicka remembers fans making noise after he performed the move. He believed that many anticipated it because it was more common in that era for spectators to also attend skaters’ pre-competition practices.
“As far as the judges, I never spoke to any of them personally, but I don’t think it really influenced our marks, either pro or con,” he said. “I don’t know if they really knew how to judge it or approach it.”
The move was banned after the 1976 season. Olympic historians said it was deemed too dangerous and that it violated one of the sport’s principles of landing on one skate. Kubicka never learned an official reason.
“I know the controversy at the time was it’s head over heels, it’s landed on two feet,” he said. “There were all kinds of things they were trying to come up with.”
The backflip continued to be performed by skaters in non-competitive shows. Kubicka estimated he did hundreds from age 19 to 22 before ending a three-year run with Ice Capades to go back to school and ultimately become a veterinarian.
Surya Bonaly’s illegal backflip at 1998 Olympics
The backflip’s big splash came at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Frenchwoman Surya Bonaly, a three-time world silver medalist, was sixth in the short program while limited by injury. That put her out of realistic medal contention going into the free skate.
In what she knew would be her last Olympic performance, she decided to do a then-illegal backflip — landing on one skate — and ended up 10th overall.
Bonaly, who first did a backflip on ice at age 12, said she performed it on the sport’s biggest stage because it made her happy and because she wanted to do something unprecedented for an Olympics. It was unprecedented, since Kubicka had landed his on two skates.
Bonaly estimated she did more than 1,000 backflips through her last one at a show in São Paulo, Brazil at age 40.
DORTMUND, GERMANY - FEBRUARY 3: French skater Surya Bonaly performs, 03 February in Dortmund, Germany, during the women’s technical program in the European figure skating championships. Bonaly placed second in the event behind Russia’s Olga Markova. (COLOR KEY: Flower is orange. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read VINCENT AMALVY/AFP via Getty Images)
Surya Bonaly performed backflips on ice for nearly three decades. (AFP via Getty Images)
For the 25 years after Nagano, the backflip remained largely in figure skating’s background. Bonaly’s story was retold every four years around the Olympics. Skaters performed it in shows, including gold medalist Nathan Chen and Canadian Keegan Messing at the exhibition gala at the 2022 Winter Games.
Then last October, Adam Siao Him Fa of France did a backflip in competition. He received a two-point deduction (from a total free skate score of 200.80 points) but wasn’t deterred. He did it again in repeating as European champion this past January and at the world championships in March.
At Euros, Siao Him Fa had such a comfortable lead that doing the backflip late in his free skate wasn’t going to drop him from first place.
At worlds, Siao Him Fa was 19th in the short program, so there was also less risk in taking the deduction in the free skate. However, that free skate was so excellent that he jumped from 19th place to bronze, but still more than 20 points behind silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama of Japan.
“I want to push the sport, and I want to give the opportunity for myself and also for the future skaters to express freely what they want to do,” Siao Him Fa said. “By starting doing that (backflip), it’s doing a step for pushing the sport.”
Kubicka, who’d helped originate the move, was at worlds for Siao Him Fa’s latest entry to the backflip’s history. He was an official on the three-person technical panel that identifies elements in each skater’s program to be scored.
“It was our responsibility as a technical panel to call it illegal and make a deduction,” Kubicka said.
Both Siao Him Fa and Kubicka said around that time, or shortly after that free skate, there was talk that the backflip might be made legal by the International Skating Union.
A month later, the ISU published a 106-page agenda for its offseason congress in Las Vegas in June. In the middle of page 101, in a section regarding amending rules, the words “somersault type jumps” were written in strikethru, indicating a proposal to remove them from the banned list.
Below that, it read, “Reason: somersault type jumps are very spectacular and nowadays it is not logical anymore to include them as illegal movements.”
The proposal passed. The backflip wasn’t assigned a point value like a jump has, but it can affect component (or artistic) scores. It isn’t required. Few top skaters are expected to incorporate it into programs this season.
France’s Adam Siao Him Fa performs the men’s free program during the ISU European Figure Skating Championship 2024 in the Zalgiris Arena in Kaunas, Lithuania, on January 12, 2024. (Photo by Daniel MIHAILESCU / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP via Getty Images)
Adam Siao Him Fa performs a backflip at the 2024 European Championships. (AFP via Getty Images)
Bonaly doesn’t remember exactly how she found out the backflip became legal for the first time in 48 years, but she was pleasantly surprised.
“Now it feels more like free skating,” she said. “We felt like it was always that movement of being stopped and not able to do what we want. I guess now there is more freedom on ice. You can do more what you want and express yourself in many ways, and I think it’s great.”
Then on Aug. 12 came a foreshadowing at Fenway Park. Malinin threw a ceremonial first pitch while in town to promote next March’s world championships in Boston.
He tossed a strike from just in front of the mound, then celebrated with a standing backflip.
On Sept. 15, Malinin skated into a backflip on ice in competition for the first time in his victorious season debut at Lombardia Trophy in Italy.
In learning the move, he had benefited from taking gymnastics lessons from age 3 to 8. Malinin has done backflips off ice for four or five years and has thought about whether to learn it on ice for nearly as long. Before the rule change, he already decided he would start doing it in shows this past offseason.
Ryan Bradley, the 2011 U.S. champion, was one of three skaters who aided Malinin as he finished learning the backflip to debut it at a show in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July.
“I was kind of surprised that Ilia wanted to do them in competition, just because he has so much risk in his programs already, like more risk than I would have ever thought possible in a free program,” Bradley said. “But I mean that kid is just infinitely talented, and he has so much confidence that, I guess in hindsight, it doesn’t surprise me.”
Kubicka, Bonaly and Bradley (who has also performed backflips in shows for years) all acknowledged a level of risk with the element.
“I would hope that now that it’s legal, that any coach who is encouraging their students to consider it, they would have the appropriate training prior to incorporating it onto the ice,” Kubicka said.
Bonaly, now a skating coach at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in Minnesota, said she would not teach a backflip to her skaters. Bonaly never seriously injured herself on a traditional backflip on ice, but did end up in the hospital once after crashing while attempting a backflip with a twist.
“Of course, yes, there is a risk,” said Siao Him Fa, who first practiced the backflip while wearing a helmet and a harness. “After all, it has to be learned with a lot of safety first.”
This weekend, Malinin is expected to perform a backflip in the Skate America free skate on Sunday.
Siao Him Fa said he plans to include one in his short program and his free skate this year, which means he could do it on Friday and Saturday in his season debut in Nice, France.
“I think that I can find a way to make it really cool and kind of scare the audience a little bit,” Malinin said. “You know, give them that really unknown vibe in a way.”
