It Was Illegal for 50 Years. Now Olympic Crowds Are Flipping for It.

"Read more of Slate's 2026 Olympics coverage . Ask any figure skating aficionado what their biggest question is going into the men's free skate programs, and they'll likely tell you, "Will Ilia Malinin attempt a quadruple axel?" This jump, a forward takeoff followed by 4.5 revolutions in the air and a backward landing, has never before been completed on the Olympic stage. Malinin is the only skater ever to land the jump in competition- that's what makes him the "Quad God.""

"Backflips are having a moment on the ice, even outside the realm of obsessives like me who closely follow boundary-pushing trends in figure skating. The move was attempted in the Olympics just twice between 1976 and 2022, meaning that Malinin's two back tucks at the games thus far-one in the team event and one in the men's singles short program-have doubled the number of backflips performed in Olympic history."

"Mind you, this is not because the backflip is an exceptionally hard skill to master. I was an ice skater through high school, and I remember at least one kid at my rink whipping out the move as a party trick whenever he got the chance. As 2026 U.S. Junior National Champion Patrick Blackwell put it, "It's just a [toe] pick and a look back." Rather, the backflip was scarcely seen on the Olympic stage because it was verboten for nearly 50 years."

Ilia Malinin is the only skater to have landed a quadruple axel in competition, a forward takeoff with 4.5 revolutions and a backward landing. The quadruple axel has never been completed at the Olympics, and speculation centers on whether Malinin will attempt it in the men's free skate. Backflips have reappeared in Olympic competition after nearly five decades of prohibition; Malinin's two back tucks at the 2026 Games doubled the number of Olympic backflips. The backflip requires an X-axis rotation rather than traditional Y-axis jump revolutions and was once treated as an act of defiance against the International Skating Union. Terry Kubicka landed the first Olympic backflip in 1976.

Read at Slate Magazine