During the women’s free skate portion of the team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics, 15-year-old Kamila Valiyeva of Russia become the first to land a quadruple jump at the Olympics during competition.
Prior to Valieyva’s amazing move, only two who have competed in women’s competition are believed to have attempted to land the skill in competitions before, Black figure skater Surya Bonaly of France in 1992 during the Albertville Games, and Japanese figure skater Miki Ando during the 2006 Torino Winter Games—neither were successful.
French figure skater Surya Bonaly’s attempted quad thirty years ago, while she was a teen, was discounted due to under rotation. However, she paved the way for future attempts. Skating rules had precluded those competing in the women’s category from performing quadruple jumps in the short program, but Bonaly, best known for her single-blade backflips, would not be deterred.
She noted to NBC Sports’ Nick Zaccardi that she had landed clean quads in practice, making it clear that she was capable of doing what many thought women weren’t capable of.
“I wanted to do it, not because I wanted to be the first woman to do it, but because I know that women don’t have to just be pretty and try to do a nice spiral,” said Bonaly. “We definitely can mix both aspects of being pretty and be tough and be able to jump.”
Bonaly’s comments speak to the ways in which girls and women athletes are often bound by the politics of beauty when it comes to competition, where athleticism and strength are often deemed counter to ideal notions of femininity and grace.
As a Black woman, Bonaly’s athletic career was doubly bound by the intersection of race and gender in a sport historically residing in a white space. Sociologist Elijah Anderson defines it as an area in which the presence of Black and other people of color are unexpected, unwelcome, and/or marginalized.
We are now a week into Black History Month. So far it’s been marred by the murder of 22-year-old Amir Locke in Minneapolis, bomb threats made against several HBCU campuses by domestic terrorists and Black NFL coaches being humiliated in the head coaching process once again.
Those are more reasons as to why Bonaly’s contribution to skating is worthy of reflection.
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