Surya Bonaly

Surya Varuna Claudine Bonaly (born 15 December 1973) is a French-born retired competitive figure skater. She is a three-time World silver medalist (1993–1995), a five-time European champion (1991–1995), the 1991 World Junior Champion, and a nine-time French national champion (1989–1997). Bonaly is the only Olympic figure skater to land a backflip on one blade; she performed it at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and retired soon afterward. She had a long and successful career as a professional figure skater, performing in ice shows all over the world and winning many professional competitions. She became a coach in Las Vegas, Colorado, Minnesota, and Switzerland. Surya Varuna Claudine Bonaly was born in Nice, France, on 15 December 1973. Her birth name was Claudine; she was adopted out of an orphanage at the age of eight months by Suzanne Bonaly, a physical education teacher in Nice, and Georges Bonaly, a draftsman who worked for the French government, who named her after t...