On the Edge
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Hey, Lulu here.

We are going back to the archives for hands down one of my top three favorite radio labs of all time. I'm not going to say any more. Wait, you're listening? Here is Jad and Robert. Okay. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. Rewind.

Okay, so then, how are we going to introduce this? How would you convince the many people listening to stay listening? Because it's a great story. It doesn't matter that it's figure skating. It's like a really good story. It's a good story that like pops off of... Okay, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolwich. This is Radiolab. And look, I've never been a huge fan of figure skating, but like this story, I think, asks a really interesting question. The question would be, what if you...

with all your heart wanted to be the best at something. But the persons who judge what's the best at this something you want to do don't share the bestness with your sense of bestness. So you do your best and their best and your best are different and now you can't best it out. What do you do? What do you do? Story comes from our producer Latif Nasser and also producer Tracy Hunt. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. So let's start then. So, okay. So we're starting in 1998.

We're at the Olympics in Nagano. In Japan. Japan. And warming up on the ice, you have this woman, this figure skater, Surya Bonnelly. How do you spell Surya? S-U-R-Y-A. She's French, 24 years old. She's black. Five times European champion, but all sorts of problems, particularly injury problems. She's got an Achilles tendon that's been stitched together. She's pulled a muscle. She's on painkillers.

She competed for France in 1994 and just missed the podium. She's never medaled at the Olympics before. This is her, probably her last go in front of the world. For France, here is Sariya Bonaly. And it was during this performance that Sariya Bonaly did something that had never been done by anyone. Anyone. Anyone.

And you could either see it as a kind of middle finger to the establishment, like this huge F-you. Or... Speak up! Oh my gosh! Hello! Just this beautiful moment of self-affirmation. What did she do? Uh, we'll get there.

Hello. Hello. How are you doing? Pretty good, thanks. I laughed out loud when I heard you say that you would call me on your Zamboni break. Yeah, I know. I was like, it's the only time. Okay, so to really understand just the context of all this and the stakes of that moment, we got to go all the way back. So how did you first get into skating? Well, I did start skating because of

of my mom, actually. So, Saria was actually adopted as a baby by this white couple in the south of France. She grew up in Nice. My mom was a sport coach, and she was able to be like a volunteer for a gymnastic club and skating club.

So even though, you know, I was small, tiny, tiny, she just put me on the ice and said, hey, just hang around and chill on the ice. And, you know, and I spent lots of hours there just waiting for my mom. And one day I find out that I had, you know, cancer.

some skating boots would fit me. She started skating. Yeah. Fortunately, I was good at it. Pretty soon, she had a coach. From the local ring, I guess, a coach can have a call and have a meeting with your parents and say, hey, you know, it would be nice if you could come like two times a week. Now it would be nice if we'll do maybe four times a week. Well, how about every day? I was like, oh, okay. Here we go.

And so by the age of 10, she decides she wants to spend her life figure skating. It was my dream to, you know, to do it, and I know I can. So she would go to these ice shows. Like Holiday on Ice. Ah!

When I see the show, I love the bling bling. I love the showtime and just, you know, those fantastic costumes. She would see all these famous skaters. I had my eyes glued on those skaters. They would just be flying through the air. I thought it was like amazing. And she would go to practice and she would practice all of the things she saw. All the double axles and the triple toe loops. Split jumps. The sow cows and the double sow cows. And the, you know, quadruple double cow cows.

The triple axles. Do you have any idea what you're saying right now? No, no, no. These are all just words to me. It was very fast. I improve every week, every month. You can see a difference. And speaking of difference, you know, if we fast forward a little bit. And here she is on the world stage, Surya Bonaly. In 1989, when she appears at the world championships. The thing that becomes really apparent is that she is...

Yeah, because I was black. So I was like, people like, what? French, black? So I'm black and...

I definitely remember when she was about to skate, my mom would be like, the black girl is skating. So we all had to like pay attention. And so people start to be kind of curious. This girl is very different. Oh, it was, it was arresting. That's Johnette Howard. Senior writer for ESPN.com. Surya Banalee is a striking and exotic figure on the ice. She just arrested your eyes when she skated. The contrast of her skin on the ice was beautiful.

And then there were these fanciful stories that sprung up about where she came from. We are now taking you about as far away from the skating world as possible. Pretty much as soon as she hit the scene, you started hearing these rumors that she had been adopted from a coconut-strewn beach in Reunion Island off the coast of Madagascar.

An unlikely place to find a world-class figure skater. And that she had, um, that she, what was it? That she never cut her hair. Surya has not cut her hair since her birth. That she existed on a diet of bird seed and, you know, all these things. Yeah. I mean, I get the idea like she's some kind of black forest princess or something. Exactly, yeah. Exactly, yes. Surya says, you know...

At that age, she really didn't know too much about what was going on. You know, as a kid, I was like, whatever, my coach deal it. You know, he's the one who speak English. She could barely speak English. She was barely 16. Yeah, she was still a young baby. You know, I did talk to the guy who was coaching her at the time, this guy named Didier Gage. And...

And he told me he planted these stories. We use the press very well. Wait, what? He said that he made up the beach thing. He made up the hair thing because he was trying to. She was a star. And what do you want to hear? Stories, right? So we made some stories, some good ones. Do you know what I mean? I'm just saying that we're making up stories because you want to hear them. That is just creeped out. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's shady as f**k.

But I can kind of see where he was going because what he was trying to do was that he was trying to present her to the world as this like radically new kind of skater. Because the female skating at that moment were nice, cute girls. Especially for ladies, they like to keep the girls pretty. Flowers for Katarina. Those famous skaters like Katarina Witt. The ravishing Katarina Witt.

Look, there's Sonia Henney! Sonia Henney. They were totally like women, you know, pretty, graceful, who make those men crazy when they were watching it, you know. They were also... White. What would I say? They had a certain conception of female skating. We didn't have the same one. And it wasn't just that she looked different, she also skated differently. It was a totally different approach. Sariya was always very, like...

Explosive. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis Stoico is in the building. Three-time world figure skating champion. Met Surya Jr.'s 1990. For me, it was sort of a new face on the scene. And here's the... I feel like the fresh stick of yam. Tiny 15-year-old French girl who's captured everyone's imagination here. Like, say, a Tonya Harding-style skating. She was just so exciting, and there was just no boundaries for her. This is Tonya Harding. Mm-hmm.

And she and Surya were friends. The strength and the power. She'd step on the ice and people go crazy. Surya Ponali. She'd strike a pose and then just...

take off. Saria would go from one end to the other. Good speed across the ice. Flying across the rink. With powerful stroking. Her opening, a triple lutz and a triple toe. She'd come hurling into these jumps. Triple lutz! Soaring through the air. Triple toe loop. With powerful spin. Wow. And she'd do jump after jump. That really was a cool cut. She really is amazing. Combination after combination. Another triple flip. I prefer to hit a triple, triple jump than just to do a pretty spready goal. And she would attack

everything. It's a very fast step sequence. She had the stepping, the gliding, the running. She had it all. What a talent and the crowd here appreciate it with such jumping ability and there's no end to what she might achieve.

Outside of competition, she would do these ice shows and exhibitions, and that's when you would see what she could really do. She would just do all kinds of other jumps that weren't even allowed in competition. She would do backflips. Backflips? Yes, backflips. The very first time that I ever saw her do a backflip, I mean, my mouth just dropped open. That's Tonya Harding again? I was like, how did you do that? Because it's really dangerous. Elvis Stoico told us that one time he tried it, and it did not go well. I came down right on my face.

And I split my eye open and almost broke my neck. And I was just like, you know what? I don't think this is going to be a good thing. But this little teenage girl, Sariah Bonnelly, no problem. Just doing it like it was nothing. She was just absolutely fearless. And the crowd loved it. People, like, when they stand up and start making noise and tap their feet into the ground, I can feel, like, the whole building. I'm like, I swear, it looks like an earthquake. But...

Here's what happened, and this is where things kind of get confusing. As Surya blows up, and all these people who never liked figure skating fall in love with her over and over. The judges don't. Artistic impression. And you can see disparity from the judges at 575. And the crowd do not like the marks. Upset, no doubt. So, she doesn't get high scores? No. Tears begin to flow.

It happens all the time. I skate good, but somehow it's not for me. So the judging system in figure skating goes from 0 to 6. And on Surya's artistic marks, she would get scores like 5-0s, 5-1s. Yeah, you get your low 5s, which sounds like it's a good mark, but that's not a good mark.

What'd she say there? She said, never mind, that's life, I'm used to it. But clearly there were some times where I got her. There was this one time we found on YouTube where she...

She boos the judges. What? After she gets her score. The whole crowd is booing. So why was she getting bad marks to begin with? What was the problem? Well, that's a question, and it's kind of complicated. Yeah, well, I think there's several things. Johnette Howard, that ESPN writer, she says the first thing you got to know, and just to take a quick little dive into the weirdo world of figure skating. Let's dive. Is that there's this...

fundamental tension in the sport of figure skating between artistry on one side and athleticism on the other. Powerfulness versus prettiness. They want these people to look like little ballerinas but leap into these jumps like

And at the time, skating was sort of locked in this loud and fractious debate about what do we want to be? And Surya was sort of the epitome of almost the end point. What could happen if somebody with unrivaled athleticism and no aversion to risk was willing to go after it? And I think there were a lot of people in skating that didn't want it.

I went through it. I know all about it. Now, Tonya Harding, she said that she had this issue. I didn't want to skate like what they wanted skating to look like. Elvis Stoico, too. But in Sariya's case... There's a lot of work to be done on the choreography yet. There's a lot of work to be done on the grace. All those words used to criticize her skating. There's a lot there to be fixed. I'd like to see her stop jumping for six months and learn to skate.

We're just a little bit more loaded. They would say things like, oh, raw talent there. There's a lot of raw talent, but it's not fully kind of, hasn't been refined. And it's, for us, like non-skaters, that's been one of the challenges of this story, I guess, is trying to see, is that a legit criticism? Or is this just a way of saying that she's...

It was racism. I have the courage to say it because she was black. So this is Marie-Ren Laguna, and she is a former French figure skating official. And she was part of a team whose job it was to decide which girls to send to the World Junior Championships. And we have to choose only two girls. And we had three possibilities. She said that she backed Saria. And the majority of the people didn't want black skaters back.

Were they saying it out loud? Look, we don't want somebody. We don't want her because she's black. No, it was very subtle. In fact, according to her, what they would say, they would say the kind of things like she was too muscular or she wasn't elegant enough. Oh, yes. I have to say that word elegance. Many times I have heard that word. She's not elegant. Marie Wren is an outsider in the figure skating world these days because of an unrelated scandal.

And so we weren't totally sure what to think about that. Wait, how did Saria feel about all this? Well, I asked her, did you feel like any of the difficulty was because you're black? No. Did you feel like any of it was about race? No. No, no, no. But then moments later she said, Well, you know, when you're black, you know, everybody knows that you have to do better than anybody else who's white. Well, I think the idea that she was held back

in her marks for any other reason other than the quality of her skating, I think is incorrect. That's Sandra Bezic. I've been involved in the skating world my whole life as a competitor, as an Olympian, a commentator. And actually as a commentator? I'd like to see her stop jumping for six months and learn to skate. She was kind of hard on Surya. Yes. And when we asked her why, this is what she said. Everything about skating is built on circles.

The radius could be huge, but it's still a circle. Everything is about edges and leaning into those edges and leaning into the turns and carving massive circles on the ice. And that is our sport, which leads to Surya.

I mean, if you watch her jumps, they're, they were on straight lines. And if a jump is on a straight line, then it can't land with flow. Because the idea is to land your jump with as much speed and flow as you had going into it. And that's something that she couldn't do because she was jumping on straight lines. And then the other thing about skating that you don't necessarily get on camera is the sound of the edge.

The sound of a beautiful skater going from edge to edge, from lean to lean. What does that sound like? It's a beautiful sound. It's a sound that we all love. It's a gentle carving.

It's a clean sound. The sound I have in my head is like a hockey shot, but that's probably not the sound you're listening to. No, no, no, no. Because there's no... I can tell you, there are no scratches. It's a glide sound.

It's just a hum. Gosh, I wish I had a good word to describe it. And there are different sounds. I mean, like there's the sound of Brian Boitano's back crossovers that used to excite me when I was in the rink with him. But then there's also sort of the gentle, almost soundless quality of, say, a Yuka Sato or a Katya Gordieva, where they're like a whisper across the ice, and yet they're...

you know, flipping from one edge to another edge and forward to backward. And it's almost, it's just this glide. I haven't got a good word for it. Damn. So when Surya was skating, would she have that sound? No. She would be scratchy.

Now, we should say that wasn't the sound of Saria skating or any of those other people. We just, like, miked up a whole bunch of, like, pretty good figure skaters. Were they professional skaters? Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are legit skaters. They're professional figure skaters. And we sent the clip to Sandra, and she was like, yes. So she gave you the thumbs up that we got it right. Yeah. See, I don't necessarily hear whatever it is she is hearing and think, yes. I mean, they sound different.

But not even that different, really? So that's exactly the problem. Ice skating is largely about aesthetics. So as far as sports go, it's like kind of in its own category. Like if you're talking about Serena Williams, who's facing a lot of these same kinds of criticisms, it doesn't matter. There's a line on a court and it's either inside or outside. There are rules. Whereas there aren't these rules when it comes to beauty. It's super slushy.

And that makes someone like Saria much more vulnerable.

So what ended up happening? Well, after a couple of years of getting these kinds of marks, she does some soul searching. I mean, I was a bit more mature. In 1992, at the age of 18. I had new choreographies, changed my whole skating world, you know, I changed coaches. And she decides to take the note. She actually travels to California and works with Frank Carroll, who's like this legendary American coach. And what she's doing is that she's trying to, you know,

be more graceful, more beautiful, more elegant. More circly. More circly, yeah. And after that, you kind of see a difference. Yeah, you can watch the YouTube videos from that period, and it's like she's a different skater. Huh. Yeah. Does it work? Yeah. In 1993, in the World Championships, she comes in second. Oh. And then by the time 1994 rolls around, she is a favorite. She is probably going to win. And what happens?

things take a really strange turn. We'll be back.

This is Radiolab. Let's get back to our story about Surya Bonaly, or Bonaly as it's said in French, from producers Tracy Hunt and Latif Nasser. I'm really curious what happened at that medal ceremony in 1994. Oh, it was the World Championships? It was the World Championships, not the Olympics. No, no, no, not the Olympics, no. What?

Well, we had this world championship in Japan. Seven Olympic titles, 17 world championships. Just to set this up, the world championships are the second most important event in figure skating after the Olympics. And at the Olympics, which were just a month before, the top three ladies. 16-year-old Oksana Bayou. Oksana Bayou got gold. Nancy Kerrigan is physically red. Nancy Kerrigan got silver. Chen Liu got the bronze. The mystery.

In fourth place was Saria. Now, those top three ladies, Oksana, Nancy, Lou. Out of the picture. Out of the picture. Why? For various reasons. Injuries and some turn pro and stuff, but whatever. Okay. The point is, at these world championships, the highway had been cleared for Saria. She was going to take it. It was hers for the taking. This is her winning season. Will it be gold?

So jumping forward to the final day of the championship, Saria is in second place. She takes the ice. 20 years old from Nice in the south of France. Starts her program. Immediately starts with this double axel. That's very incredible. After that, it's just...

Triple, triple, triple, triple, triple. It was just one of the best skates of her life. I know I did my best. I did everything. It was not perfect because nobody's perfect, but pretty good competition overall. Eventually, after about four and a half minutes, she finishes her skate. And she goes over...

off to the side to a bench with her coach to await her results. When she gets her marks, she jumps into first place and there's only one skater left.

It's a skater who usually finishes below Soria in competitions. Yuka Sato. Again, that's Sandra Bezic. We all know Yuka's skating. She's the kind of skater that puts a smile on your face. Yuka was, you know, one of these really lyrical skaters. Making his return, Elvis Stoico. And Yuka had this very beautiful style and grace to her skating. This gentle, almost soundless quality, like a whisper across the ice.

Basically, her skating style was the exact opposite end of the spectrum from Soria's. And now Yoko Sato, the 21-year-old from Tokyo. So she gets up, does her final skate in front of the home crowd. Yoko is one of my favorite skaters, but she doesn't have the combination jumps like Bonnelly did, so she's going to need all her jumps, opening up with her triple lefts. And she...

Hits her first jump. Crowd loves it. She did good. She did good. She had maybe less triples than me, but she was maybe more prettier. In her routine, there were these moments where it just looks like she was just sort of skipping across the eyes. Just very balletic moves. I know. She's good, you know. They stand as one here at Makuhari Event Center for the local favorite, Yuka Sato.

Now it's down to the judges as to whether the gold medal belongs to Sato of Japan or Bonaly of France. So Yuka, you know, gets off the ice. She goes to wait for her marks. First marks, of course, for technical merit. Bonaly's strength.

Although Sato stated and jumped so well. And every one of those marks, except the Finnish judge, go to Bonaly. She wins eight out of nine technical merit. But when it came down to the artistic marks... Just the opposite than the technical marks. Eight out of nine judges, all but the French judge giving her higher marks. Those go to Yukosada. Boy, this is going to be close. It actually ends up being a tie between...

So it goes to being a tiebreaker. And that's when the judges basically pick first, second, and third. And in a 5-4 decision... Artistic impression. There it is. She's got it. 5-4. Sato is the new world champion. Unfortunately, they choose her. Off to the dressing room for the new champion. She'll be back, and so will we, for the medal ceremony.

What happens next is one of these moments that really defines Sari's story for a lot of people. So what happened was that right after all the results were out, they set up the medal ceremony. They called out the skaters. They first called out Yuka. She comes out from this tunnel backstage onto the ice. What a moment. Waves, smiles at everybody. And then after about a minute...

And now the silver medalist. They called out Surya. Surya Bonaly. But... And where is the European champion? All the cameras crowding around and... She didn't come out. Not immediately. A late arrival and here she comes.

She skates out onto the ice. She waves, but her face isn't smiling. No. And then when she gets to the podium, she congratulates Yukisato. But then... Bonnelly has chosen not to stand on the podium. She just stopped before getting on the podium. She just stood right next to the podium. I think this is a form of protest.

I really hope she doesn't go through with this. She wouldn't stand on it. She was crying. Elvis actually was in the crowd watching. I felt bad for her because I know what she was going through, where you know you outskated your competitor and they just wouldn't give it to you. And I was like, Sariya, just get on the podium, take the medal. The figure skating official who's giving out the medals. He gives Yuka the gold, puts it around her neck.

But then when he turns to Saria, he just sort of stands there, looks at her. He says something, but you can't hear what it is. She shakes her head. He puts the medal around Saria's neck, shakes her hand, and then he holds onto her hand and just kind of like pulls her onto the podium. This is a first for me, that's for sure. Just heartbroken. Oh, and she takes off the medal.

She takes the silver medal off of her head. Like, oh my God, holy s***, she's actually doing this? It was huge. It was a huge deal. The camera zooms in on her face and she is just weeping. Oh, what's going on inside that young woman? So after the medal ceremony is over,

She just gets mobbed by reporters. Why did you not accept the medal? What was the problem? Are they unfair to you, Surya? Are the judges unfair to you? Do you feel you were robbed tonight? Is that what you're saying? Did you deserve the gold medal, Surya?

And eventually what she says is... I'm just not lucky. I'm just not lucky.

What was going on? Like, what happened? I think it was more like a point of saying, this is it, stop now. You know, when you put your fist on a table and say, okay, now, enough is enough. That's it. And say, hey, you know, I'm not dumb and I'm getting sick now. I'm sick of it. I keep my eyes open. That is not fair. That has to stop. And it was just so depressing and it was so not fair. Mostly it was not fair. What about it felt unfair?

Just that's, you know, happened over and over so many times that every time it's never me because whatever I can do, how many triple, I can be pretty, I can have the best choreographer. So everything was made to be on the top. And still, I'm like, what do you need more of me to do at this point? You know, how many triple, triple you want me? If I don't do, you kill me. And if I do, you don't care in any way. You choose somebody else. Don't you think that that's a little unsportsmanlike?

Yeah, totally. Absolutely. Yeah, but if she... I mean, all these other girls have worked just as hard as she has, one presumes. Sure, but okay, so picture yourself if you're in that position. You find yourself getting second, second. You feel like you're not... She came in second. That's okay. The margin was so close. It was so close. It's always close. Yeah. Can I... Yeah, yeah, go, go, go. Um...

I just more like felt empathy for her. I can't imagine what it must be like. Well, I can imagine what it must be like. But I, you know, in that kind, on that scale, to be the only one. And there is this, I think for, you know, a friend of mine once told me that racism can make black people crazy. Yeah.

Which is a very broad way of looking at it in the sense that you kind of almost never know why people are reacting to you the way that they do. And you're always sort of second-guessing, you know, was that, you know, did they, oh, that guy just came in and he said hi to everybody in the room, but he didn't say it to me. What was that about? And so there's no obvious thing about it, but it can make you feel...

a little paranoid, a little crazy. Now, I cannot put myself-- I can't imagine how, you know, Saria felt in that moment. But I didn't necessarily, like, think that, you know, these prejudiced people had denied her this. If anything, I felt more like, "Man, it really must suck to be the only Black woman skating at that kind of level and not really understand why things are happening." Or maybe...

It must be like a very confusing situation to be in. And that is and it was more like empathy. I don't know, you know, if if if there was racism. Quite frankly, Yuka Sato is an amazing skater. I think you're right. It's very legitimate to feel like.

Like you can't put your finger on this feeling which never goes away. No. And never resolves and is always there and always makes you feel good.

What happens after the... That's our producer, Matt Kielty. After the ceremony. I think the rep that she got after this moment was that she was a sore loser and that she was defiant, that she had a bad attitude. And does she quit at this point or not?

No, she keeps going. She competed again in the World Championships in 1995, the very next year, and she came in second again. Again. So three years in a row. In a similar pattern? Was there like just one sort of... That one wasn't as close, but she was second again for the third year. Did she skate in a lot of other competitions after 95? I think...

Yeah, the various, you know, European championships, you know, Skate America. Yeah, she was doing a lot. She never wins? Not at the Olympics, not at the World Championships, no. So she never gets first? What? I guess it depends on how you define first. What do you mean? Well, you'll see. So that actually takes us right back to the beginning.

We're here live at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning in Japan. So to jump forward, but rewind, we're in Nagano, Japan, 1998 Winter Olympics. I knew it was my last Olympics, last major, major big competition. And everything was fine until the day before the short program. I pulled a muscle.

Her left leg. And I couldn't lift. I couldn't do anything. To make matters worse, Saria at that moment was already recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon. People had to carry me to walk stairs because I couldn't get stairs. So they have to lift me to go to my room because, you know, it's an Olympic village. I couldn't walk.

You know, if I'm broken, I'm damaged, I'm like a used car that's really good for, you know, for trash. I was like, you know, really, I was so messed up between my legs and my Achilles. I was like, oh, it's a disaster. And the doctor said, maybe we should withdraw. I'm like, no, I'm already here. You know, I don't want to just maybe retire. It's probably my last competition. I don't want to just retire like that. Just give me anything you can. I have to keep going.

And so on the final day, she says that she, you know, between medicine, massage, acupuncture, pills, she goes back out on the ice and is now getting ready to skate for her country. She's in this golden blue sequined outfit and she starts her routine. You can tell she's favoring one leg, but she manages to land a few jumps. Didn't work for the sale code. Then she falls. She gets back up.

keeps going through her routine. There's the triple sailco. And then she says she just got to this point where she just knew she couldn't do it. It was so much in pain. And towards the end of the program, I was supposed to go for two more triple. And I said, you know what? I'm not good. I don't feel it. I

I know I'm going to crash. I can do it. I'm not capable. My leg is not with me anymore. And then what comes to her is that there is this move that she has in her repertoire that she can do, but it's illegal. I had a special thing in my backpack and say, hey, I can do it.

It's my last competition. Was this all going through your mind as you were skating? Yeah, oh yeah, totally. You know, me, it's like a computer. You know, if I would have missed something, a jump, I'll say, okay, here, I can fit a triple here. Over there, I can do a combo, triple, triple. I know I need to fit something. You're like the GPS lady. You're like recalculating. Yeah, totally. Rerouting. Okay, what do we have to do right now? So in her rerouting, she turns around from skating forwards to skating backwards, picks up speed just like she's about to do a triple, and then she does a triple.

But instead... She does... a backflip. But not any old backflip. She swings one leg over... Does the splits in the air. Upside down? Yeah. And then she lands... On one... Oh my goodness. Backflip.

When you do the backflip, do you go do your skates go up towards the ceiling and then come back down underneath you? It's a backflip. I just don't know how else to. Why was it illegal? Well, it's illegal because it's so dangerous. Also, she says you're supposed to land all your jumps on one foot.

But she did that here. And she finishes her program with her back to the judges.

And, you know, usually you skate, you perform, you smile in front of the camera, boom, they give you the mark, next skater. For me, it took like 10 minutes, seriously, 10 minutes people thinking about what should we do. I was like, oh my God, they didn't know what to do with me. And I said, whatever, just put a zero and so we can move on. Here are the marks. Did she get nailed?

Absolutely. 4-8, 5-2. She knew. How do you get noticed in Olympic competition? Do a backflip. So they didn't change their mind about the backflip in the end. Nope. So she ends up finishing 10th. I was like, yeah, I finished 10th, but it's okay.

Now, afterwards, a lot of people interpreted that backflip as a big fat middle finger up to the entire skating world. I know you don't want me to, but I'm going to do this anyway. But when I asked Saria if that's what was happening, she said, No, I don't know why people keep saying that, you know, I was just trying to be happy.

She said she just wanted something that was hers. Yes, yes, yeah. Had anyone ever done this backflip onto one blade before? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm the one who created this one. That's why it's called the Bonali. Oh, that's called the Bonali? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm the only one who did it. Wow. You're the first person in the history of the human race who has done that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So knock on wood, I hope, you know, I'll be able to die in peace. Don't steal my backflip. It's mine. I'll do my best. Yeah, it's mine. So I'm just curious, like, what has happened since this story ended? Well, she retired from figure skating after the 98 Olympics. She continues to do ice shows occasionally.

But right now, I think the main thing that she's doing is she's coaching. She lives in Minnesota and she's coaching young skaters. But like when we asked people like, oh, did she did she change the sport? Did she change figure skating? The answer they would keep giving to us was no. No, she didn't. A lot of people were like, you know, it's not like all of a sudden.

Figure skating rinks across the country, across the world, are flooded with little black girls learning their sock howls and their lutzas and things like that. I will say from what I can tell, for the first time that there's more than one black

black skater competing at the same time internationally at least what about backflips are there backflips no no backflips sadly are they still illegal they are still illegal yeah yes so um she was just this sort of like almost this sort of blip on the skating scene where she was just

You know, no one was like her before. And there hasn't really been anyone like her since. But there is this kind of ironic thing, I guess, which is that...

if you took her and you put her in competition today, if she was competing on the world stage today, she would probably do better than she did back then. They've changed the scoring system. So now you get points for doing the kinds of power moves that she was doing way back when. And even if you spill, even if you fail at those moves, you still get points.

You get points for trying. Yeah, just for daring. And Surya was daring. She was a darer. Producers Latif Nasser and Tracy Hunt. Tracy spent the last few months with us producing that story as part of the WNYC Fellows Program. Tracy, we will miss you. A lot. The piece was produced by Matt Kielty. Original music from Matt and also from Dylan Keefe.

Special thanks to Vanessa Riley, Moira North, skaters Aliza Anjali and Christian Irwin from the Ice Theater of New York, and to Ed Haber for recording it all, and a very heartfelt thanks to Marilyn Wiggins. I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Kulwich. Thanks for listening.

Hi, I'm Maureen and I'm calling from Charlottesville, Virginia. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, Akedi Foster-Keys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, and

Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Hi, this is Beth from San Francisco. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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