Ilia Malinin's Olympic backflip made history. But he's not the first to do it

""It's honestly such an incredible roar-feeling in the environment once I do that backflip everyone is like screaming for joy and they're just out of control," Malinin said. "The backflip is something that I'm sure a lot of people know the basics of so I think just having that really can bring in the non-figure skating crowd as well.""

""There was a lot of controversy leading up to the Olympics, because I did it for the first time a month before at the U.S. Championships," Kubicka told U.S. Figure Skating decades later. "At the time, there was no ruling on as how it would be [scored] and the feedback that I got was that judges did not really see it as a pro or con because they didn't know how to judge it.""

Ilia Malinin landed a backflip on Olympic ice in Milan, executing one on a single blade and provoking an extraordinary arena reaction. Malinin trained in gymnastics and earned the nickname "Quad God" for his skyward jumps, but the backflip has drawn widespread attention. Malinin first performed the backflip in competition in 2024 after the International Skating Union lifted its ban. The legal Olympic landing is the first in five decades. Terry Kubicka performed a backflip at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics; the ISU banned the move afterward citing danger and the violation of the single-skate landing principle. The element's return revived judging and safety controversy.

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