The backflip was banned in figure skating soon after Terry Kubicka landed one at the 1976 Olympics, and Surya Bonaly famously did one anyway in 1998. The International Skating Union took it off its list of illegal moves in 2024, so it no longer costs points, but it doesn't earn any either. At the 2026 Olympics, Ilia Malinin landed the first legal one-blade backflip in Olympic history.
Key takeaways
- Terry Kubicka landed the first Olympic backflip in 1976, on two skates, and the ISU banned the move the following year.
- Surya Bonaly's one-blade backflip at the 1998 Olympics was illegal, she knew it, and the ban was already about 20 years old.
- Since 2024, backflips are allowed in ISU junior and senior singles and pairs, but they earn no technical points.
- Malinin's backflips lit up the 2026 Olympics and started a debate about how Bonaly was treated for the same move.
Few moves in figure skating have a story like the backflip. It was banned for almost half a century, became one of the most famous moments in Olympic skating history when it was done illegally, and came back in 2024. Then it was the talk of the 2026 Olympics in Milan.
This article covers what a backflip on skates is, why it was banned and later allowed, what it scores today, and what happened in 2026. It ends with what it means for adult skaters, which is mostly a cheerful "please don't".
What a backflip on skates is
A backflip on the ice is a full backward somersault. The skater takes off from the ice, turns head over heels in the air and lands back on their blades. The rulebooks call moves like this somersault-type jumps.
That makes it very different from the jumps you see in programs. A Salchow, a lutz or an axel rotates around an upright body, like a spinning top, and lands on one foot on a backward edge. A backflip turns end over end instead, which is why it was treated as a separate kind of move, and why landing it on one blade is so hard. Our guide to every figure skating jump explains the jumps that do score.
Why the backflip was banned
The American skater Terry Kubicka, a former U.S. champion, landed the first backflip at the Olympics at the 1976 Games in Innsbruck. He landed it on two skates. The International Skating Union, the sport's governing body, banned the backflip the following year.
Two reasons are usually given. The move was seen as too dangerous, and landing on two feet broke the principle that jumps land on one skate. For the next several decades, a somersault in competition was an illegal element that cost points. Backflips lived on in ice shows and exhibitions, where there are no judges to please.
One myth is worth clearing up. The ban had nothing to do with Surya Bonaly. It was in place about 20 years before her famous backflip, which is exactly why hers was such a bold choice.
Surya Bonaly in Nagano
Surya Bonaly was one of the most athletic skaters of the 1990s. The French skater won five European titles and three world silver medals in a row, and she was known for her jumps and power. By the 1998 Olympics in Nagano she was skating while injured.
In her free skate, Bonaly did a backflip and landed it on one blade, the first time anyone had done that at the Olympics. She knew it was illegal and that the judges would take points off, and she did it anyway. Her thinking, as NPR put it, was that if she wasn't going to win a medal, she could at least make history. She finished tenth.
The moment became one of the most replayed in Olympic skating, and the move is often called the Bonaly flip. It's widely seen as a brave act of defiance, and it made her a hero to a lot of skaters.
The 2024 rule change
By the 2020s, skaters were pushing at the ban. At the 2024 European Championships, France's Adam Siao Him Fa did a backflip in his free skate, took the two-point deduction and still won the title. He did it again at the 2024 World Championships and came away with the bronze medal.
A few months later, at its 2024 Congress in Las Vegas, the ISU voted to remove somersault-type jumps from its list of illegal elements, effective right away for the 2024-25 season. The proposal gave a short reason, "somersault type jumps are very spectacular and nowadays it is not logical anymore to include them as illegal movements," and it passed.
The change covers ISU junior and senior singles and pairs. National federations set the rules for other levels, and synchronized skating kept solo backflips on its illegal list. Malinin, who trained in gymnastics when he was younger, first did his backflip in competition in 2024, the year the ban was lifted.
What a backflip is worth now
A backflip still isn't assigned any points and isn't a required element, so it adds nothing to a skater's technical score. The only score it can affect is the program components score, which covers things like presentation and how the program holds together, and a fall on it would still bring a deduction like any other fall.
So a backflip is all risk for very little reward on the scoresheet. Skaters who do it are doing it for the crowd, for the joy of it and for how it makes the program feel. When we checked in October 2026, we found no change to how backflips are treated for the 2026-27 season. Our guide to how figure skating scoring works explains technical and component scores.
The backflip at the 2026 Olympics
Ilia Malinin did a backflip in both of his team event programs in Milan, the short program on February 7 and the free skate on February 8. He landed the second on a single blade in the skate that sealed the team gold for the United States. The Associated Press described it as the first time anyone had legally landed a backflip on one skate at the Olympics.
He did it again in the individual event, where he led after the short program with 108.16 points. In the free skate he fell twice and finished eighth, and Kazakhstan's Mikhail Shaidorov won the gold. Our roundup of figure skating at the 2026 Olympics has the full results.
The pairs event nearly had a backflip too. In the 2025-26 season, Canada's Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps became the first pair to perform an assisted backflip in ISU competition. They planned it for Milan, but took it out after Stellato-Dudek hit her head in training in late January, and they finished eleventh. Our story on Deanna Stellato-Dudek tells the rest of her remarkable comeback.
The debate about Bonaly and Malinin
As Malinin was cheered for his backflips, many people pointed back to Bonaly. As the Associated Press put it, some argue that punishing Bonaly then and praising Malinin now shows a double standard that still exists in figure skating. Bonaly is Black, and many fans saw the contrast in who gets celebrated for the same move.
The rules really had changed, so Malinin's backflip was legal and Bonaly's wasn't. But the wider conversation was about more than the rulebook, and about how differently athletic skaters have been judged over the years. Both things can be true, and fans have been talking about them since February.
Bonaly herself was generous. Speaking to the Associated Press from Minnesota, she said it was great to see a backflip on Olympic ice and that skating needs to keep pushing to a higher level. She said she was "born too early" and added: "I broke ice for other skaters. Now everything is different. People welcome anyone as long as they are good and that is what life is about."
What it means for adult skaters
For most of us, the backflip is something to watch, not something to try. The ISU change covers junior and senior international competition, and national federations set their own rules for other levels. Skate Canada, for one, kept somersault-type jumps illegal in its adult categories. If you compete as an adult, check your federation's rules before you plan anything acrobatic.
The skaters who do backflips on the ice, like Malinin and Stellato-Dudek, have gymnastics backgrounds, and even they practice with care. A backflip is not a move to work out on a public session, and the ice is a very hard place to land on your head. Leave it to the gymnasts, and cheer.
What adult skaters can take from the story is the spirit of it. Bonaly skated her way, and Stellato-Dudek came back to the sport as an adult and was still adding new tricks in her forties. Our guide to starting figure skating as an adult is a good place to begin your own story.
Sources
These are the reports and documents we relied on, checked through web search in October 2026. We read the news articles as they appeared in search results and syndicated copies.
- NPR, Ilia Malinin's Olympic backflip made history. But he's not the first to do it (February 9, 2026): Kubicka in 1976, the ban the following year and its reasons, Bonaly in 1998.
- Associated Press, Malinin made history with his Olympic backflip, but some say the glory was owed to a Black skater (February 9, 2026): the one-skate landing in the team free skate, Kubicka's two-skate landing, the double-standard debate and Bonaly's comments.
- International Skating Union, 2024 Congress report and agenda: removal of somersault-type jumps from the illegal elements, and the stated reason.
- Skate Canada, 2024 ISU Congress Summary of Changes: the change applies to junior and senior only, and somersault-type jumps stay illegal in Skate Canada's adult and other domestic categories.
- U.S. Figure Skating, The Backflip is Well, Back (October 2024): no points value, and the rule change at the 2024 Congress.
- Golden Skate, Adam Siao Him Fa defends European title (January 2024): the backflip and two-point deduction.
- International Skating Union, Yes, she can backflip: Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps continue to amaze: the first pair backflip in ISU competition.
- Team Canada (olympic.ca), on Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps after her pre-Games injury (February 2026), and Skate Canada's pairs results from Milano Cortina 2026: the backflip removed from their short program, and eleventh place.
- Associated Press and Golden Skate coverage of the Milano Cortina men's event (February 2026): Malinin's 108.16 short program, eighth place, and Shaidorov's gold.
- Lead Stories, Fact Check: Backflip Was NOT Prohibited In Figure Skating Because Of Surya Bonaly (February 2023).
