Ilia Malinin is a showman. Even before his free skate debacle and the controversy that followed, Malinin dazzled everyone with beautiful performances at the team event. Team USA won the gold medal with Malinin leading the charge. Yet, the most attractive and viral part of his performance received no points.

Malinin launched himself into a backflip, and it detonated through the crowd like a firecracker. The 21-year-old double world champion landed the first legal Olympic backflip since American Terry Kubicka in 1976. The backflip used to be banned for safety reasons after Kubicka did one at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics. 

It is popularly known as the “Bonaly flip,” named after Surya Bonaly of France. She famously thumbed her nose at the International Skating Union’s restrictive rules at the 1998 Nagano Olympics using this flip. It made her an icon throughout the world. Bonaly, now 52, does not mind that Malinin now owns a move that she is popular for. 

“Because somebody had to start,” she told CBS News. “It’s already difficult to be the first one for anything you try. I was a pioneer … great … (but) was not really welcome. But now I opened the doors or broken the ice for many people. And I think that is even more important.”

Now, even though the backflip ending on a single skate is technically legal, it does not affect the end score. Figure skating scoring has a rigid set of moves that has been established for a while. Since the backflip was out of the picture for a long time, it does not fall in that grouping. Arguably, it makes Malinin’s and Bonaly’s achievements even more significant. 

“It’s honestly such an incredible roar-feeling in the environment — once I do that backflip, everyone is like screaming for joy, and they’re just out of control,” Malinin said. “The backflip is something that I’m sure a lot of people know the basics of … so I think just having that really can bring in the non-figure skating crowd as well.”

Just to put that exclamation mark on that performance, Malinin risks the incredibly difficult move. He is also the only one performing the quadruple axel, but that gives him points on the board. To perform it just for the love of the game and applause is true artistic commitment.  Maybe one day it would be included in the points system as well. Before Bonaly, no one even imagined that such a move would be performed at the biggest stage. Even Bonaly herself could have avoided it if she had pursued a medal.

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She was recovering from an Achilles tendon rupture at the time, but still wanted her name to be heard at the 1998 Olympics.  Today, fans remember her legacy more than many more successful skaters. And through Malinin, that legacy lives on. But beyond the roar that followed his gravity-defying moment, the Olympic stage brought a very different test for Malinin.

Ilia Malinin Confident of Comeback After Olympic Pressure Took Its Toll

We already know that free skating performance has defined Ilia Malinin’s Olympic Games. He fell twice and finished eighth, and did not look like his usual self at all. Later, Malinin admitted that the pressure from the media and the fans was a lot more than he imagined. “The most honest way to say it is it’s just a lot of on you, just so many eyes, so much attention,” he said. Malinin also referred to the media aggregation playing a part in increasing participant nervousness. However, now that he has experienced this feeling, Malinin will not be bothered the next time he takes the Olympic ice in the French Alps.

“Experiencing something for the first time, you don’t know what to feel,” he said of the Olympic stage. “I didn’t know how it [would feel]… but once you get comfortable with it, it really is more like, ‘Okay, I’ve done this once, so now I know how to approach it; what to do.’”

There is no substitute for experience. Malinin would have visualised his performance hundreds of times. But when he actually came on, his heartbeat would have spiked to another level, and he could see the fans and their expectations in their eyes. Despite dominating multiple world events, the Olympics are a different deal altogether.