(6 June 2024)  This past season, European Champion Adam Siao Him Fa of France drew more attention with his backflip than with his quadruple jumps. To the delight of many fans, the 22-year-old included the forbidden element several times in his Free Skating, true to the revolutionary spirit you can expect from a Frenchman. At Worlds in Montreal, Siao Him Fa made headlines not only by pulling up from 19^th place after the Short Program to the podium but also by doing the backflip.

“I had nothing to lose so I said to myself, go for it, the rest doesn’t matter”, Adam said right after he skated. Well, it turned out that he did have something to lose as the two-points deduction for the illegal element could have cost him his bronze medal. Luckily they didn’t.

Not many people were aware of the fact that the man who performed the first backflip in competition, former U.S. Champion Terry Kubicka, served as Technical Specialist in the Men’s event in Montreal. He of all people had to deduct these two points. The backflip came as a surprise to Kubicka and the rest of the technical panel and judges.

“Well, obviously he got penalized at Europeans and I was very surprised,” Kubicka said. “I mean, he skated so well in the free. It was sad that he did not skate better in the short. But I think we were all shocked that he did it in the end of his free. It was kind of fun, with the rumor that they are going to allow it to come back next year.”

The backflip probably will be back or, rather, will be legal again. The ISU Technical Committee included a proposal for the for the upcoming ISU Congress to delete the sentence in rule 610 that says “Illegal elements are somersault type jumps”. The Technical Committee’s gives their reason for the proposal: “Somersault type jumps are very spectacular and nowadays it is not logical anymore to include them as illegal movements.”

If the move will be allowed again, it will be thanks to Siao Him Fa, who did it at the Shanghai Trophy, Coupe de Nice, at the European as well as the World Championships and got the discussion going.

“I knew that I was losing a couple of points, but I wanted to push our sport, to move it forward and to bring back this element”, Siao Him Fa said at Europeans in Kaunas. “It is not that dangerous. It looks like it, but in fact it is scarier to watch than it really is. I think this will push more skaters in the future to try some new elements.”

The first backflip in competition

Let’s look back to where it all started. Terry Kubicka shocked everyone when he became the first skater to perform the backflip in competition at the 1976 U.S. Nationals.

Terry Kubicka with technical panel colleagues from Worlds, Technical Specialist Jae Eun Chung (left) and Technical Controller Yukiko Okabe right).

“It was basically my coach's idea, Evy Scotvold”, Kubicka revealed. “I had taken from him my entire life from the first day I stepped on the ice until the day I finally retired. And so, being with him for those nine or 10 years, I just trusted him. He said, this is something we're going to try. It was kind of crazy, interesting, and only later, a year or so later after it was done, did I find out that he had done it before. He used to be a professional skater in Ice Follies. He fell and had a head injury from it.”

Not knowing about the injury of his coach, Terry decided to learn to do the backflip. “At the time I had a sister who did gymnastics and so I went to her gymnastics coach and I learned it obviously on the ground first. That was how I learned it and in retrospect now, the first time I tried it on the ice, my coach was skating alongside of me and I had a towel wrapped around my waist. When I went to do it, he would hold the towel and help me flip. Now I think it's going to be much less risky because they have a harness that they can use.”

At the time Kubicka got a lot of coverage for his move. “It was an Olympic year, which is always bigger than most other years,” he recalled. “And that time, most everything was focused around Dorothy (Hamill), because she was the American Queen and competing for the gold medal at the Olympics. I really wasn't in contention as far as top three, a medal at the Olympics goes. I don't think that we said ‘we're going to wait until this year to do it’. I was doing most of the triples, and this was just kind of the next step to the athletic end of figure skating. That was just kind of the way we looked at it. Skating at the time was going much more towards the artistic end. I can remember Toller (Cranston) telling the media (about me) ‘well, he's trying to make skating to a circus’, which kind of hurt, because here he was expanding the sport artistically. I always remember that comment that he made to the media.”

Kubicka went to Innsbruck to the Olympic Games, where he did the backflip and finished seventh. He also did the move at the World Championships the same year and then he retired as he had planned, even though he was only 19 years old. After performing in an ice show for a little while he went to university and studied to become a veterinarian, which was his dream since he was very young.

Following Terry’s stunt with the backflip, the ISU decided to ban it as illegal. One reason apparently was that it was considered too dangerous and also that it was not landed on one foot and therefore not a “clean” element.

“I never really got an absolute confirmation of why it was banned,” Kubicka noted. “They said it was too dangerous, but I never really saw anything in writing. The judges didn't really know how to score it. I kind of got the impression that they just didn't do anything with it. But it's okay. I was fortunate during the time that I got a lot of coverage.

“During the time when I was skating, I was much more on the athletic end versus the artistic end. Like today, obviously there's Ilia (Malinin) and then there is Jason (Brown), so very different ends of the spectrum.

“When I was skating, there was much more push towards John Curry and Toller Cranston, which were embellishing the artistic end of it. For me, talking with my coach, it was more to expand the athletic end of the sport. At the time, we weren't doing anything compared to what they're doing now. I was doing triple Lutzes, which no one else was doing at that time.”

The backflip was gone as quickly as it had appeared in figure skating competitions. But it was always there in shows and popular with audiences all over the world.

Then the Olympic Winter Games 1998 in Nagano came and five-time European Champion Surya Bonaly of France did a backflip in the Free Skating and she even landed it on one foot.

It was a little rebellion on her part as she had no medal chance anymore and often felt that she wasn’t fairly judged. It was also her way to say good bye as she ended her career. When asked if his backflip was a tribute to his famous countrywoman, Siao Him Fa answered, laughing: "It’s kind of French know-how. We like to bring something special to the sport.”

Dangerous or not?

How dangerous is this somersault jump? Should it be allowed to make figure skating more spectacular and attractive to audiences? Most athletes feel that the backflip is much easier than it looks like. “The backflip is not difficult to learn,” said Brian Orser. He is concerned that a lot of skaters will do it once it is allowed to get more components and GOEs for their choreographic step sequence which then, in his opinion, could lead to problems in practices.

“I think there is definitely an element of danger in it,” Kubicka agreed. “You would hope that a coach, regardless of the move that you're working on, makes sure that the skater is ready for it. I think, as we kind of touched on earlier, there are better apparatuses to learn it on. I believe they can now do it on a harness where it wasn't even a thought process back in 1976.

“You don't want to see them (skaters) get hurt as a bottom line. You don't want to see people doing things that they're not prepared to do. If it does become eligible to become counted as an element or a transition or choreo move, you just hope people are smart about learning it.

You're not going to do a quad, pairs are not going to do a quad twist before they're able to do a good triple twist and things like that,” he concluded.

Kubicka feels that working on a backflip is similar to going into a flip and Lutz but nevertheless he understands Orser’s concern. “I can remember back in 76 when we were skating, we were always concerned about Toller Cranston with his large spirals back, that he was not looking out for anybody,” he recalled.

On the other hand, if the backflip is just a choreo element it is not to be expected that everyone is going to it because of the risk of injury and it is just not everyone’s cup of tea. Estonia’s Alexander Selevko said that he dislocated his shoulder when trying the backflip. Former Russian skater Alexei Vasilievski is said to have suffered a head injury when working on a back flip for a show. Matteo Rizzo summed it up pretty well at Europeans: "
I think it would be good to allow it. It is like doing a spread eagle. I can’t do a good spread eagle, so I’m not doing it. I’m not doing a backflip. Adam can do the backflip, so it would be a good idea that he can do it if he wants to, but not as an element but as part of the choreography.“

Anyway there are lots of other interesting choreo elements that skaters now are doing, such as Ilia Malinin does is “raspberry twist” and others include hydro blading moves. All this is popular with audiences.

There are different options for including the backflip. “They're (ISU Technical Committee) talking about it and they proposed it either be just in the choreo or allowing it as a transition move throughout the entire program. So it'll be interesting to see what Congress comes up with as far as allowing it or not,” Kubicka observed.

“If it's an element that's really not going to get points, if it's just considered a transition or in the choreo as a confirmation I don't think you'd be seeing every other program with a backflip.

If it was being awarded the score of a triple Lutz, that would be a whole different story. Then they're trying to do it to earn those type of technical scores that are given to the regular jumps,” he added.

Kubicka, who did not follow the sport of figure skating much after retiring and becoming a veterinarian but only returned when asked to become a Technical Specialist, pointed out another interesting fact. “In 76 when it (the backflip) was banned, the head of the technical committee was Sonia Bianchetti. And now they're talking about it coming back and (her son) Fabio is at the head of the technical committee. I think it's kind of ironic, besides the whole fact that I happened to be part of the event at Montreal - it's kind of an interesting circle of events, where we started and where we may be going to.”

Terry Kubicka is glad he is involved in the skating world again and he feels that the current judging system is much better than the 6.0 system that he was judged by. He pointed out that he feels for the first time being part of a team sport when working with two colleagues on the technical panel at events.

“I felt very fortunate, leaving the sport and being able to pursue a career that I wanted and then be able to be asked back into the sport and enjoy where the sport has gone in so many years,” he shared.

“Compared to where we were back in 76, we had more of a fear of the judges. And now I think they've made it more of a conscientious effort to have technical panelists and judges work with individuals, elite skaters, where there's not that fear of talking to judges, it's much more congenial to share ideas and how you can help, improve and how they might improve their technical scores. We in the States have critiques where we they ask us to talk to the skaters and such. I think it's a much more open, congenial, successful meeting between the skaters and the judges.”