Ilia Malinin and his backward somersault: A forbidden jump for 50 years

Ilia Malinin is pure spectacle. At 21 years of age, the American skater is looking to become one of the big names at these Milan-Cortina Olympic Games. He already has a gold medal to his name, in the team competition in which his performance was key to rescuing the team and winning the title. In this first final, the American, the son of two figure skaters who represented Uzbekistan, performed a jump, the backflip, which had been banned in figure skating for almost 50 years.

The element was considered too dangerous for the skater's integrity, hence its ban, but it was again allowed to be performed in competitions from 2024. However, despite its spectacular nature, it is a jump that does not score as a technical element, although some skaters introduce it into their routines to increase their plasticity and grandeur.

The crowd loves this kind of acrobatics. An example was the reaction of Novak Djokovic in the stands when Malinin performed the somersault. "I saw Novak. It's amazing," the skater said after the jump. "I heard that after landing my backflip, he had his hands on his head. It's amazing. It's a once-in-a-lifetime moment. I'm completely blown away."

Thus, Malinin became the first skater to perform the backflip at an Olympic Games, 'legally', since Terry Kubicka was the first to do so in 1976, at the Innsbruck Games. However, the American was the first skater in history to perform the clean backflip with a single-blade reception, which reinforces his figure as a pioneer in this discipline.

This element has also been synonymous with protest. Skater Surya Bonaly performed it at the 1998 Nagano Games, but because it was outside the regulations, she was penalized. It was her way of protesting what she believed was an unfair score by the judges in the short program she had performed earlier.