The Biggest Theories Why Figure Skaters Are Banned From Performing Backflips

Technically, they were legal until 1976, but only no one had ever done one, at least not in Olympic competition. According to Slate, it was known ahead of the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria that Terry Kubicka (above) had a backflip in his bag of tricks, because he had already thrown one down in competition. That one came at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships one month before the games, and Kubicka managed to weave it into the end of his final skate of the competition, a trick which, according to an Associated Press article from the time, “brought the wildly cheering crowd to its feet even before the end of the performance.” In fact, the Colorado Springs crowd got so loud that after landing his backflip, Kubicka couldn’t even hear the music he was supposed to be performing along to.

Even before the competition started, Kubicka made it clear he planned to include the trick, which prompted questions about its legality. Kubicka himself said that as far as he knew it was legal, so he included it in his performance. It was the first and only legal backflip ever landed at the Olympics, but it only netted him a seventh-place finish.

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