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Surya Varuna Claudine Bonaly was born in Nice, France, on 15 December 1973. [1] [2] Her birth name was Claudine.She was named after the Hindu deities Surya and Varuna.She was placed in an orphanage by her birth mother and was adopted at eight months by Suzanne Bonaly, a physical education teacher in Nice, and Georges Bonaly, a draftsman who worked for the French government.
Baiul began competing and took the silver medal at the 1993 European Championships in Helsinki, finishing second to Surya Bonaly of France. [18] Prior to the 1993 World Championships in Prague, Baiul had crashed into the boards and displaced disks in her back and neck. [8] At the event, she stopped practicing and consulted a Czech doctor. [8]
The French figure skater, a Black pioneer in a predominantly white sport, helped define the sport that now requires athleticism and quad jumps at the elite level.
Terry Kubicka from the U.S. was the first figure skater to successfully execute a legal backflip at the Olympics, during the 1976 Winter Olympics. [3] Kubicka got the idea of using the backflip in his skating from Evy Scotvold, his coach, who wanted to help advance athleticism in figure skating and to go beyond the triple jumps that were the most difficult elements in the sport at the time.
While not a medal winner, France's injured Surya Bonaly, who placed 10th, completed an (illegal) backflip during her long program, making her the fourth person and only woman to ever land a backflip in competition. She is the only person to land on one foot and to do a split mid-air (now colloquially referred to as a 'Bonaly').
Rank Name Nation TFP SP FS 1: Surya Bonaly France 1.5: 1: 1 2: Oksana Baiul Ukraine 3.5: 3: 2 3: Marina Kielmann Germany 4.0: 2: 3 4 Tanja Szewczenko Germany 6.0: 4: 4 5 Maria Butyrskaya Russia
Six skaters share the record for the most silver medals won (with three): Megan Taylor from Great Britain, Regine Heitzer from Austria, Gabriele Seyfert from East Germany, Surya Bonaly from France, Irina Slutskaya from Russia, and Michelle Kwan from the United States.
Judgement: Surya Bonaly struggles with racism from judges as a figure skater, but never lets go of her identity and becomes a role model for a new generation of black female skaters. Stone Cold: Pat Ryan seeks to upend the curling world, and comes up with a strategy that makes him almost unbeatable. However, Ryan's tactics also make the sport ...