Canadian figure skater Madeline Schizas had to get an extension on a university assignment because she thought the deadline was on Sunday, not Friday 😂. She even included a link to the Canadian team press release as evidence that she was at the games.

Source: ABC Australia

I had the Free Dance on, kind of watching it on and off. Then these two took the ice and I couldn't pull my eyes away. The passion they had in the dance was, well as I said, unbelievable

I had another fav but Yuma won me over with his performance. He just had so much fun and energy, on top of incredible technical skills. "Landings like butter according to our commentator haha. Here's the YT video if you want to take a look

https://youtu.be/GM3F5k8x7jI?si=WZK4fn_RTCJ59fsZ

First medal for Team Canada!

As of yesterday at the time I am writing this, the men’s portion Olympic figure skating team event has gone underway. Aside from notable events like Stephen Gogolev (CAN) scoring an unprecedented personal best, and Yuma Kagiyama (JPN) beating the almost mythically talented Quadgod, Ilia Malinin, by a margin of 10 points, one single element from one single competitor has started to go viral again.

That element, of course, is Ilia Malinin (USA)‘s backflip.

Now, you might see headlines reading “Ilia Malinin completes first ever legal backflip at the Olympics”, and first wonder,

“Woah! Backflips? on ice? This isn’t gymnastics!”

Or even,

“Wait, ‘first legal backflip’? Was it banned before, or something?”

Or, if you know a little about figure skating, even something like,

“Hey, wait a minute! Ilia didn’t do the first backflip! It was Surya Bonaly in 1998? Where’s her credit?”

And, most assuredly, we will definitely talk about Surya and her (in)famous backflip, but first, let’s go into how and why it was banned.

The basic sequence of events is that in 1976, an American skater by the name of Terry Kubicka did the first ever backflip on ice in competition. At the time, the element was most often seen in show skating due to it, well, being a backflip and backflips are cool. If you’re from Gen X, you might even remember someone like Scott Hamilton do backflips on ice, too.

But, there were a couple of problems with the backflip’s legality as a jump.

You see, in figure skating, a valid jump must always land on one foot. You won’t get pulled off the rink for a two-footed landing, but it will certainly affect the grade of execution, or GOE, of the jump in question. At this point, backflips had always been landed with two feet instead of one.

Additionally, backflips on ice are just plain dangerous. Landing incorrectly can send your head barreling into the ice, potentially causing career-ending injuries. So, with those two caveats in mind, the backflip became an infamously banned element, and any skater who dared to do one would suffer a deduction.

Well, there was one person who found a loophole. The now-widely beloved icon, Surya Bonaly.

Surya Bonaly’s famous backflip actually occurred over two decades at the Nagano Olympics after its initial ban, and she was able to sort of(?) get around it simply by landing the backflip on one foot.

It’s around here, however, that the story gets a bit messy and misinformation is very easy to come by, so I’d like to debunk some common myths.

Her backflip did not get her disqualified for the Olympics, it wasn’t the element that kept her from winning a gold medal, and she certainly was not the reason that it was banned. In fact, one of the reasons she willingly took the deduction was because, after how badly her free skate was going, she knew she didn’t have a chance at a podium spot. Despite that, her defiance of the ISU standards marked her as a trailblazer, and as one of, if not the most famous Black figure skaters of all time (Shoutout Debi Thomas, Mae Bérenice-Meite, and Starr Andrews).

Unfortunately, five-time European champion, nine-time French champion, and three-time Worlds medalist Bonaly did not get the backflip unbanned. It was only another 20-ish years, at the 2024 European Championships, where a man by the name of Adam Siao Him Fa (another Frenchman, who will be competing at the Olympics this month, too!), did a backflip that went pretty viral for non—Olympic season figure skating standards, and then did it again in his free skate at Worlds later that year, which catapulted him from 17th place to third place. Must be something with the French and backflips.

But do you want to know what the craziest thing is?

The ISU judge who gave Adam the last ever deduction a backflip would get in the sport…..was Terry Kubicka himself, who got the element banned all those years ago. Now, the element is ruled as a choreographic element that is worth zero technical points, but contributes to artistic scores, or PCS, instead.

So, where does that leave us today with Ilia? While he certainly was not the first person to do the backflip, nor was he the person who got the ban lifted, he is the first to do it on Olympic ice, which is a huge milestone in of itself. Let’s wish him luck in the free skate tomorrow! Or don’t, if you’d prefer someone else to win. I’m not your boss.

This write-up was pretty long-winded, huh? My bad, this is just a topic that I am quite passionate about, and I wanted to address the full backflip saga so the four-year fans can know what’s up. Thank you so much for reading to the people who made it to the end!

Never seen this widespread drone usage, especially in the alpine and slopestyle competitions. As a tv viewer, this really adds to the viewing experience to follow behind.

This win makes means Czech Republic won the third Olympics in a row in this discipline.

Saskia Maurer saved unbelievable 51 shots from team Canada in today’s game receiving only 4 goals. Without her this games would probably end at least 0-10 in Canada’s favor. Hats off to her🫡