[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Okay, so then if—what? How are we gonna introduce this? How would you convince the many people listening to stay listening?

LATIF NASSER:  'Cause it's a great story. It doesn't matter that it's figure skating, it's like a really good story, it's a good story that, like, pops off of its, like ...

JAD: Okay, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich. 

JAD: This is Radiolab, and look—I—I've never been a huge fan of figure skating but, like, this story, I think, asks a really interesting question.

ROBERT: The question would be: what if you, with all your heart, wanted to be the best at something, but the persons who judge what's the best at this something you want to do don't share the best-ness with your sense of best-ness, so you do you best, and their best and your best are different and now you can't best it out?

JAD: What do you do?

ROBERT: What do you do?

JAD: This story comes from our producer Latif Nasser and also producer Tracie Hunte. 

TRACIE HUNTE: Okay.

LATIF: Okay. Okay, all right. Okay, so let's start then—so okay, so we're starting in 1998. We're at the Olympics in Nagano.

ROBERT: Mm, in Japan.

LATIF: Japan. And ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: On the ice ...]

LATIF: Warming up on the ice, you have this woman, this figure skater, Surya Bonaly.

ROBERT: So how do you spell Surya?

TRACIE: S-U-R-Y-A. She's French, 24 years old. She's Black.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Was five times European champion, but all sorts of problems, particularly injury problems.]

TRACIE: She's got an Achilles tendon that's been stitched together.

LATIF: Pulled a muscle.

TRACIE: She's on painkillers. And ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: She competed for France in 1994, and just missed the podium.]

LATIF: She's never medaled at the Olympics before. This is her—probably her last go in—in front of the world.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: For France, here is Surya Bonaly.]

LATIF: And it was during this performance that Surya Bonaly did something that had never been done by anyone.

TRACIE: Anyone. Ever.

LATIF: And you could either see it as a—as a kind of ...

TRACIE: Middle finger to the establishment, like this huge F-U.

LATIF: Or ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Speak—oh my gosh! Boom! Hello!]

TRACIE: Just this beautiful moment of self-affirmation.

JAD: What'd she do?

LATIF: We'll—we'll get there.

SURYA BONALY: Hello?

LATIF: Hello!

SURYA BONALY: Hi.

LATIF: How are you doing?

SURYA BONALY: Pretty good, thanks.

LATIF: I laughed out loud when I—when I heard you say that you would call me on your zamboni break.

SURYA BONALY: Yeah. I know, I was like, it's the only time. And I guess ...

LATIF: Okay, so to really understand just the context of all this and the stakes of that — that moment, we've got to go all the way back.

LATIF: So—so how did you—how did you first get into skating?

SURYA BONALY:  Well, I did start skating because of my mom, actually.

TRACIE: So Surya was actually adopted as a baby by this white couple in the south of France. She grew up in Nice.

SURYA BONALY:  My mom was a sport coach, and she was able to be like a volunteer for a gymnastic club and skating club. So even though, you know, I was small, tiny, tiny, she just put me on the ice and say "Hey, just hang around and chill on the ice." And, you know, and I spent lots of hours there, just waiting for my mom. And one day, I guess, find out that I had, you know, some skating boots that fit me, and ...

LATIF: She started skating.

SURYA BONALY: Yeah. Fortunately, I was good at it.

TRACIE: Pretty soon, she had a coach.

SURYA BONALY: From the local rink. I guess a coach kind of called and have a meeting with your parents, say, "Hey, you know, it would be nice if you could come, like, two times a week. Now it will be nice if we'll do maybe four times a week. Well, how about every day?" I was like, "Oh, okay. Here we go."

LATIF: And so by the age of 10, she decides she wants to spend her life figure skating.

SURYA BONALY: It was my dream to—you know, to do it, and I know I can.

LATIF: So she would go to these ice shows ...

SURYA BONALY: Like "Holiday on Ice." And when I see the show I loved the moving, I loved showtime and just, you know, those fantastic costumes.

TRACIE: She would see all these famous skaters ...

SURYA BONALY: I had my eyes glued on those skaters.

TRACIE: ... they would just be flying through the air.

SURYA BONALY: I thought it was, like, amazing.

LATIF: And she would go to practice, and she would practice all of the things she saw, all the—the double axels and the triple toe loops ...

SURYA BONALY: And spin jumps ...

LATIF: Salchows and the double salchows. And the, you know, quadruple, double triple axels.

JAD: Do you have any idea what you're saying right now?

LATIF: No. No. No. These are all just words to me.

SURYA BONALY: It was very fast. I—I improved, like, every week, every month you can see a difference.

TRACIE: And speaking of difference, you know, if we fast-forward a little bit ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And here she is on the world stage, Surya Bonaly.]

TRACIE: In 1989, when she appears at the world championships ...

LATIF: The thing that becomes really apparent is that she is different.

SURYA BONALY: Yeah. Because I was Black so, like, people like, "What? French? Black?"

TRACIE: So I'm Black, and I definitely remember when she was about to skate, my mom would be like, "The Black girl is skating!" So we all had to, like, pay attention.

SURYA BONALY: And so people start to be kind of curious.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: This girl is very different.]

JOHNETTE HOWARD: Well, it was—it was arresting.

TRACIE: That's Johnette Howard.

JOHNETTE HOWARD: I've been a writer for ESPN.com.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Surya Bonaly is a striking and exotic figure on the ice. She is ...]

JOHNETTE HOWARD: She just arrested your eyes when she skated. The—the contrast of her skin on the ice was beautiful. And then there were these fanciful stories that sprung up about where she came from.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: We are now taking you about as far away from the skating world as possible.]

LATIF: Pretty much as soon as she hit the scene, you started hearing these rumors that she had been adopted from a coconut-strewn beach in Reunion Island off the coast of Madagascar.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: An unlikely place to find a world-class figure skater.]

LATIF: And that she had that—that—that she—what was it?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Notice her hair.]

TRACIE: That she never cut her hair.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Surya has not cut her hair since her birth.]

JOHNETTE HOWARD: That she existed on a diet of birdseed and, you know, all these things.

TRACIE: Yeah.

ROBERT: I mean, an idea like she's some kind of Black forest princess or something?

LATIF: Exactly.

TRACIE: Exactly, yes. Surya says, you know, at that age, she really didn't know too much about what was going on.

SURYA BONALY: You know, I was a kid. I was like, whatever. My coach deal with it. You know, he's the one who speaks English.

TRACIE: She could barely speak English. She was barely 16.

DIDIER GAILHAGU: Yeah, she was still a young baby.

TRACIE: I—you know, I did talk to the guy who was coaching her at the time, this guy named Didier Gailhagu, and—and he told me he planted these stories.

DIDIER GAILHAGU: We used the press very well.

JAD: Wait, what?

TRACIE: He said that he made up the beach thing, he made up the hair thing. Because he was trying to—she was a star.

DIDIER GAILHAGU:  And what do we want to hear? Stories, right? So we made some stories. Some good ones, you know what I mean? I'm just saying that we're making up stories because you want to hear them.

JAD: That is just creeptown I—that's weird.

TRACIE: Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's shady as [bleep.]

JAD: Yeah.

TRACIE: But I can kind of see where he was going, because what he was trying to do was that he was trying to present her to the world as this, like, radically new kind of skater.

DIDIER GAILHAGU: Because female skating at that moment were nice, cute girls.

SURYA BONALY: Especially for ladies, they like to keep little girls pretty.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Flowers for Katarina.]

SURYA BONALY: Those famous skaters like Katarina Witt.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: The ravishing Katarna Witt.]

SURYA BONALY: Or ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Look, it's Sonja Henie!]

SURYA BONALY: Sonja Henie. They were, like, totally like, women. You know, pretty, graceful, who makes those men, you know, crazy when you were watching it, you know?

TRACIE: They were also ...

DIDIER GAILHAGU:  White. How would I say, they—they had a certain conception of female skating. We didn't have the same one.

LATIF: And it wasn't just that she looked different, she also skated differently.

ELVIS STOJKO: It was a totally different approach. Surya was always very, like, explosive.

LATIF: Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis Stojko is in the building.

ELVIS STOJKO: Three-time world figure skating champion.

LATIF: Met Surya at the juniors, 1990.

ELVIS STOJKO: For me, it was sort of, a—a new—a new face on the scene.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And here's the ...]

ELVIS STOJKO: Like a fresh stick of gum.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: ... tiny 15-year-old French girl who's captured everyone's imagination here.]

ELVIS STOJKO: Like, say a Tonya Harding-style skating.

TONYA HARDING: She was just so exciting, and—and there was just no boundaries for her.

LATIF: This is Tonya Harding. Mm-hmm. And she and Surya were friends.

TONYA HARDING: The strength and the power.

ELVIS STOJKO: She'd step on the ice and people would go crazy.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Surya Bonaly!]

TRACIE: She'd strike a pose, and then just take off.

ELVIS STOJKO: Surya would go from one end to the other.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Big speed across the ice.]

TRACIE: Flying across the rink.

ELVIS STOJKO: With powerful stroking ... 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Her opening, a triple lutz and a triple toe.]

TRACIE: She'd come hurling into these jumps.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Triple lutz!]

TRACIE: Soaring through the air.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Triple toe!]

ELVIS STOJKO: With powerful spin.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Wow, Bonaly!]

TRACIE: And she'd do jump after jump.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: That really was a corker. She really is amazing.]

TRACIE: Combination after combination.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Another triple.]

SURYA BONALY: I prefer to hit a triple—triple jump than just to do a pretty spread eagle.

ELVIS STOJKO: And she would attack everything.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: That's a very fast step sequence.]

TONYA HARDING: She had the stepping, the gliding, the running. She had it all.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: What a talent! And the crowd here appreciate it, with such jumping ability. And there's no end to what she might achieve.]

TRACIE: Outside of competition she would do these ice shows and exhibitions, and that's when you would see, like, what she could really do.

LATIF: She would just do all kinds of other jumps that weren't even allowed in competition.

TRACIE: She would do backflips, she would do handsprings.

JAD: Backflips?

TRACIE: Yes! Backflips.

TONYA HARDING: The very first time that I ever saw her do a backflip, I mean I just—my mouth just dropped open.

TRACIE: That's Tonya Harding again.

TONYA HARDING: [laughs] I was like, "How did you do that?"

LATIF: 'Cause it's really dangerous. Elvis Stojko told us that one time he tried it and it did not go well.

ELVIS STOJKO: I came down right on my face, and I split my eye open and almost broke my neck. And I was just like, you know what? I don't think this is gonna be a good thing.

LATIF: Oh, no!

LATIF: But this little teenage girl Surya Bonaly? No problem. Just doing it like it was nothing.

TRACIE: Yeah, she was just absolutely fearless. And the crowd loved it.

SURYA BONALY: People, like, when they stand up and they start making noise and tap their feet into the ground, I can feel like the whole building—building's—like, I swear, it was like an earthquake.

LATIF: But here's what happened—and this is where things kinda get confusing. As Surya blows up, and all these people who never liked figure skating fall in love with her, over and over ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: The judges don't.]

[crowd boos]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Artistic impression.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And you can see disparity from the judges.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And the crowd do not like the marks.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Upset, no doubt. Even with the deduction.]

ROBERT: So she doesn't get high scores?

LATIF: No.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Tears begin to flow.]

SURYA BONALY: It happened all the time. I skate good, but somehow I—it's not for me.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And it's second place for Surya.]

TRACIE: So the judging system in figure skating goes from zero to six, and on Surya's artistic marks, she would get scores like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: 5.0.]

TRACIE: 5.0s, 5.1s ...

LATIF: Yeah, you get your low fives, which is, like, sounds like it's a good mark but that's not a good mark.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Surya, what did you think of those marks?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Surya Bonaly: It's okay.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Very disappointed? You were really terrific.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Surya Bonaly: It's okay. Never mind. That's life, I'm used to it.]

JAD: What did she say there?

LATIF: She said, "Never mind. That's life, I'm used to it."

SURYA BONALY: I thought, it's still sports. Sports mean challenge. Every day I try to do the best that I could do. You do your best, it's fine.

LATIF: But clearly there were some times where it got her. There was this one time we found on YouTube where she ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Surya Bonaly: Boo!]

LATIF: She boos the judges.

JAD: What?

LATIF: After she gets her score.

TRACIE: The whole crowd is booing.

JAD: Wait, so why was she getting bad marks to begin with? What was the—what was the problem?

TRACIE: Well, that's the question. And it's kinda complicated.

JOHNETTE HOWARD: Yeah, well I think there's several things.

TRACIE: Johnette Howard, that ESPN writer?

JAD: Yep.

TRACIE: She says the first thing you gotta know—and just to take a quick little dive into the weirder world of figure skating ...

LATIF: Let's dive.

TRACIE: ... is that there's this fundamental tension in the sport of figure skating between artistry on one side and athleticism on the other.

LATIF: Powerfulness versus prettiness.

JOHNETTE HOWARD: They—they want these people to look like little ballerinas but leap into these jumps like predators. And at the time, skating was sort of locked in this loud and fractious debate about what do we want to be? And Surya was sort of the epitome of almost the end point. What could happen if somebody with unrivaled athleticism and no aversion to risk was willing to go after it? And I think there were a lot of people in skating that didn't want it.

TONYA HARDING: I went through it. I know all about it.

LATIF: Now Tonya Harding, she said that she had this issue.

ELVIS STOJKO: I didn't want to skate like what they wanted skating to look like.

LATIF: Elvis Stojko too. But in Surya's case ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: There's a lot of work to be done on the choreography yet. There's a lot of work to be done on the grace.]

TRACIE: All those words used to criticize her skating ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: There's a lot there to be fixed.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: I'd like to see her stop jumping for six months and learn to skate.]

TRACIE: ... were just a little bit more loaded.

LATIF: They would say things like, "Oh ..."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Raw talent there.]

LATIF: You know, there's this—a lot of raw talent, but it's not—hasn't been refined. And it's—for us, like, non-skaters, like, that's been one of the challenges of this story, I guess is like, trying to see, like, is that a legit criticism?

TRACIE: Or is this just a way of saying that she's Black?

MARIE-REINE LE GOUGNE: It was racism. I had the courage to say it because she was Black.

LATIF: So this is Marie-Reine Le Gougne, and she is a former French figure skating official. And she was part of a team whose job it was to decide which girls to send to the World Junior Championships.

MARIE-REINE LE GOUGNE: And we have to choose two—only two girls. And we had three possibilities.

LATIF: She said that she backed Surya.

MARIE-REINE LE GOUGNE: And the majority of the people didn't—didn't want Black skaters.

TRACIE: Were they saying it out loud, like "We don't want somebody—we don't want her because she's Black?" Or was it ...

MARIE-REINE LE GOUGNE: No. It was very subtle, in fact.

TRACIE: According to her, what they would say—they would say the kind of things like she was too muscular, or she wasn't elegant enough.

MARIE-REINE LE GOUGNE: Oh yes, I have to say that word, "elegant." Many times I have heard that word. She's not elegant.

LATIF: Marie-Reine is an outsider in the figure skating world these days because of an unrelated scandal, and so we weren't totally sure what to think about that, but ...

JAD: Wait, how did Surya feel about all this?

LATIF: Well, I asked her.

LATIF: Did you feel like any of the difficulty was because you're Black?

SURYA BONALY: No, no.

LATIF: Did you feel like any of it was about race, no?

SURYA BONALY: No, no, no ...

LATIF: But then moments later, she said …

SURYA BONALY: Well, you know, when you're Black, you know, everybody knows that you have to do better than anybody else who's white.

SANDRA BEZIC: Well, I think the idea that she was held back in mark—in her marks, for any other reason other than the quality of her skating, I think is incorrect.

TRACIE: That's Sandra Bezic.

SANDRA BEZIC: I've been involved in the skating world my whole life as a competitor, as an Olympian, a commentator.

TRACIE: And actually, as a commentator ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sandra Bezic: I'd like to see her stop jumping for six months and learn to skate.]

TRACIE: She was kind of hard on Surya.

SANDRA BEZIC: Yes.

TRACIE: And when we asked her why, this is what she said ...

SANDRA BEZIC: Everything about skating is built on circles. The radius could be huge, but it's still a circle. Everything is about edges and leaning into those edges and leaning into the turns, and—and carving massive circles on the ice. And—and that is our sport. Which leads to Surya. I mean, if you watch her jumps they're—they were on straight lines, and if a jump is on a straight line then it can't land with flow. Because the idea is to land your jump with as much speed and flow as you had going into it. And that's something that she couldn't do because she was jumping on straight lines. And then the other thing about skating that you don't necessarily get on camera, is the sound of the edge. The sound of—of a beautiful skater going from edge to edge, from lean to lean.

LATIF: What does that sound like?

SANDRA BEZIC:  It's [laughs]—it's a beautiful sound. It's a sound that we all love. It's a—it's a—it's a gentle carving, it's a clean sound.

LATIF: The sound that happens in my head is like a—like a hockey stop. But that's probably not the sound you're ...

SANDRA BEZIC:  No, no, no, no. Because there's no—there—I can tell you, there are no scratches. It's a glide. It's just a—it's a hum. I—gosh, I wish I had a good word to describe it. There are different sounds. I mean, like, there's the sound of Brian Boitano's back crossovers that, you know, used to, like, excite me when I was in the rink with him. But then there's also sort of the gentle, almost soundless quality of, say, a Yuka Sato or a Katia Gordeeva, where they're like a whisper across the ice, yet they're, you know, flipping from one edge to another edge. And forward to backward, and it's almost—it's just this glide. I haven't got a good word for it. Damn!

LATIF: So when—when Surya was skating would she have that sound?

SANDRA BEZIC: No. She would be scratchy.

[skate scratching sounds]

LATIF: Now we should say that wasn't the sound of Surya skating, or any of those other people, we just, like, mic'd up a whole bunch of, like, pretty good figure skaters.

JAD: Were they professional skaters?

LATIF: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, these are legit skaters.

TRACIE: They are professional figure skaters, and we sent the clip to Sandra and she was like, "yes."

LATIF: [laughs]

JAD: So she gave you the thumbs up that we got it right?

LATIF: Yeah.

JAD: But see, I don't necessarily hear whatever it is she is hearing and think, "Yes!" I mean, they sound different, but not even that different, really.

LATIF: So that's exactly the problem. Ice skating is largely about aesthetics. So as far as sports go, it's—it's like, kind of in its own category. Like, if you're talking about Serena Williams who's facing a lot of these same kinds of criticisms, it doesn't matter. There's a line on a court and it's either inside or outside. There are rules. Whereas there aren't these rules when it comes to beauty. It's super slushy. And that makes someone like Surya much more vulnerable.

JAD: So—so what ended up happening?

TRACIE: Well, after a couple years of getting these kinds of marks, she does some soul-searching.

SURYA BONALY: I mean, I was a bit more mature.

TRACIE: In 1992 at the age of 18 ...

SURYA BONALY: I had new choreography, changed my whole skating world. You know, I changed coaches.

TRACIE: And she decides to take the note. She actually travels to California and works with Frank Carroll who's like this legendary American coach, and what she's doing is that she's trying to, you know, be more graceful, more beautiful, more elegant.

JAD: More circle-y.

TRACIE: More circle-y, yeah. And after that, you kind of see a difference.

LATIF: Yeah, you can—you can watch the YouTube videos from that period and it—it's like she's a different skater.

JAD: Huh.

TRACIE: Yeah.

JAD: Does it work?

TRACIE: Yeah. In 1993, in the world championships, she comes in second.

JAD: Oh!

LATIF: And then by the time 1994 rolls around, she is a favorite, she is—she is probably gonna win.

JAD: And what happens?

LATIF: Things take a really strange turn.

JAD: We'll be back right after this Zamboni break.

JAD: This is Radiolab. Let's get back to our story about Surya Bonaly or Bonaly as it's said in French. From producers Tracie Hunte and Latif Nasser.

LATIF: I—I was—I'm really curious what—what happened at that medal ceremony in 1994.

SURYA BONALY: Oh, it was the world championships in ...

LATIF: That was the World Championships, not the Olympics.

SURYA BONALY: Yeah.

LATIF: Yeah.

SURYA BONALY:  No, no, no. Not the Olympics, no. Well, we had these world championships in Japan.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Seven Olympic titles, 17 world championships ...]

LATIF: Just to set this up, the world championships are the second most important event in figure skating after the Olympics.

TRACIE: And at the Olympics, which were just a month before, the top three ladies ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: 16-year-old Oksana Bayul.]

TRACIE: Oksana Bayul got gold.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Nancy Kerrigan is physically ...]

TRACIE: Nancy Kerrigan got silver. Chen Lu got the bronze. In fourth place was Surya. Now those top three ladies, Oksana, Nancy, Lu ...

LATIF: Out of the picture.

TRACIE: Out of the picture. For ...

JAD: Why?

TRACIE: ... various reasons.

LATIF: Injuries, and some turned pro and stuff, but whatever.

JAD: Okay.

TRACIE: The point is, at these world championships, the—the highway had been cleared for Surya, she was going to take it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Surya Bonaly.]

TRACIE: It was hers for the taking.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: This is her winning season. Will it be gold?]

LATIF: So jumping forward to the final day of the championship, Surya is in second place. She takes the ice.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: 20 years old, from Nice in the south of France.]

LATIF: Starts her program.

TRACIE: Immediately starts with this double axel.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: That's very incredible.]

TRACIE: After that is just triple, triple, triple, triple-triple.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: ... that landing, but still she's here for business.]

TRACIE: It was just one of the best skates of her life.

SURYA BONALY: I knew I did my best. I did everything—it was not perfect, because nobody's perfect, but pretty good competition overall.

LATIF: Eventually, after about four-and-a-half minutes, she finishes her skate.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Surya Bonaly to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Loads and loads of technical difficulty. The question is how will they see her artistic effort.]

LATIF: And she goes over, off to the side to a bench with her coach to await her results.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Marks for Surya Bonaly.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Now for technical merit, and some 5.9s that please her. Those are as high as any we've seen.]

LATIF: When she gets her marks, she jumps into first place and—and—and there's only one skater left. It's a skater who usually finishes below Surya in competitions.

SANDRA BEZIC: Yuka Sato.

LATIF: Again, that's Sandra Bezic.

SANDRA BEZIC: We all know Yuka's skating.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: She's the kind of skater that puts a smile on your face.]

ELVIS STOJKO: Yuka was, you know, one of these really lyrical skaters.

LATIF: Making his return, Elvis Stojko.

ELVIS STOJKO: And Yuka had—had this very ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Gorgeous.]

ELVIS STOJKO: ... beautiful ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Style and grace.]

ELVIS STOJKO: ... to her skating.

SANDRA BEZIC: This gentle, almost soundless quality, like a whisper across the ice.

LATIF: Basically her skating style was the exact opposite end of the spectrum from Surya's.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Now Yuka Sato, the 21-year-old from Tokyo, this is the ...]

LATIF: So she gets up, does her final skate in front of the home crowd.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Yuka is one of my favorite skaters, but she doesn't have the combination jumps like Bonaly did, so she's gonna need all her jumps. Opening up with her triple lutz.]

TRACIE: And she hits her first jump. The crowd loves it.

SURYA BONALY: She did good, she did good. She—she had maybe less triples than me, but she was maybe more prettier.

TRACIE: In—in her routine, there were these moments where it just looks like she was just sort of skipping across the ice. Just very balletic moves.

SURYA BONALY: I know she's good, you know?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: They stand as one here at Makuhari Event Center for the local favorite, Yuka Sato. Now it's down to the judges as to whether the gold medal belongs to Sato of Japan or Bonaly of France.]

TRACIE: So Yuka, you know, gets off the ice. She goes to wait for her marks.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: The first marks of course, for technical merit, Bonaly's strength. Although Sato skated and jumped so well, and every one of those marks except the Finnish judge go to Bonaly. She wins eight out of nine technical merit.]

TRACIE: But when it came down to the artistic marks ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Just the opposite than the technical marks. Eight out of nine judges, all but the French judge, giving her higher marks.]

TRACIE: ... those go to Yuka Sato.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Boy, this is gonna be close.]

TRACIE: It actually ends up being a tie.

LATIF: So it goes to being a tie-breaker.

TRACIE: And that's when the judges basically pick first, second and third. And in a five-four decision ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Artistic impression.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: There it is, she's got it!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Five to four, Sato is the new world champion.]

SURYA BONALY: Unfortunately, they chose her.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Off to the dressing room for the new champion. She'll be back, and so will we for the medal ceremony.]

TRACIE: What happens next is one of these moments that really defines Surya's story for a lot of people.

LATIF: So what happened was that right after all the results were out, they set up the medal ceremony, they called out the skaters. They first called out Yuka. She comes out from this tunnel backstage onto the ice.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: What a moment!]

LATIF: Who waves, smiles at everybody. And then, after about a minute ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Surya Bonaly.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And now the silver medalist.]

LATIF: ... they called out Surya.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Surya Bonaly.] 

LATIF: But ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And where is the European champion? All the cameras crowding around, and ...]

LATIF: ... she didn't come out.

TRACIE: Not immediately.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: A late arrival. And here she comes.]

TRACIE: She skates out onto the ice. She waves, but her face isn't smiling.

LATIF: No.

TRACIE: And then when she gets to the podium, she congratulates Yuka Sato but then ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Oh, Bonaly has chosen not to stand on the podium.]

LATIF: She just stopped before getting on the podium. She just stood right next to the podium.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: I think this is a—a form of protest.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: I really hope she doesn't go through with this.]

ELVIS STOJKO: She wouldn't stand on it. She was crying.

TRACIE: Elvis actually was in the crowd, watching.

ELVIS STOJKO: I've—I felt bad for her, because I know what she was going through where you know you out-skated your competitor, and they just wouldn't give it to you. And I was like, "Surya, just get on the podium, take the medal."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: International Skating Union President Olaf Poulsen ...]

LATIF: The figure skating official who's giving out the medals, he gives Yuka the gold, puts it around her neck. But then when he turns to Surya ...

[crowd boos.]

LATIF: ... he just sort of stands there, looks at her. He says something, but you can't hear what it is. She shakes her head.

TRACIE: He puts the medal around Surya's neck, shakes her hand, and then he holds on to her hand, and just kind of like, pulls her onto the podium.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Oh, this is a first for me, that's for sure.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Just heartbroken.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Oh, and she takes off the medal!]

LATIF: She—she takes the silver medal off of her head.

ELVIS STOJKO: Like, oh my God, holy [bleep] she's actually doing this? It was huge. It was a huge—it was a huge deal.

LATIF: The camera zooms in on her face, and—and she is just weeping.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Oh, what's going on inside that young woman?]

LATIF: So after the medal ceremony is over, she just gets mobbed by reporters.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Surya!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Surya why ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Why did you not accept the medal? What was the problem?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Surya Bonaly: Because it's not my place. I'm just disappointed.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Are they unfair to you, Surya?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Surya Bonaly: What?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Are the judges unfair to you?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Surya Bonaly: It's lying.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Do you feel you were robbed tonight, is that what you're saying?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, reporter: Did you deserve the gold medal, Surya?]

TRACIE: And eventually, what she says is ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Surya Bonaly: I don't know. I'm just not lucky.]

TRACIE: I'm—I'm just not lucky.

LATIF: What—what was going on? Like, what happened? You—you ...

SURYA BONALY: I think it was more like a point of saying, this has to stop now. You know, you put your fists on the table and say, "Okay, now. Enough is enough. That's it." I'm not dumb and I'm getting sick now, I'm sick of it. I have—I keep my eyes open. That is not fair. That has to stop. And, you know, it was just so depressing. And it was so not fair. Mostly it was not fair.

LATIF: What about it felt unfair?

SURYA BONALY: Just that, you know, I've been over and over so many times that every time it's never me. Because whatever, I can do how many triples. I can be pretty, I can have the best choreographer, I can—so everything was made to be on the top.

LATIF: Right.

SURYA BONALY: And still I'm like, what do you need more of me to do at this point? You know, how many triple-triple you want from me? If I don't do, you kill me, and if I do you don't care. And anyways, you took somebody—you choose somebody else.

JAD: Wow!

ROBERT: Don't you think that that's a little unsportsmanlike?

JAD: Yeah.

TRACIE: Yeah, totally. Absolutely.

LATIF: Yeah, but if she ...

ROBERT: I mean, all these other girls have worked just as hard as she has, one presumes.

LATIF: Sure. But okay, so picture yourself if you're at the pos—you're in that position, you find yourself getting second, second, you feel like you're not ...

ROBERT: She came in second. That's okay.

LATIF: It was so—the margin was so close. It was so close. I think ...

ROBERT: It's always close.

LATIF: Yeah, I think, like ...

TRACIE: Can I?

LATIF: Yeah, yeah. Go, go, go.

TRACIE: I—I just more, like, felt empathy for her. I can't imagine what it must be like—well, I can imagine what it must be like. But I—you know, in that kind—on that scale, to be the only one. And there is this, I think for—you know, a friend of mine once told me that racism can make Black people crazy. [laughs] Which is very—a very broad way of looking at it. In the sense that you kind of almost never know why people are reacting to you the way that they do. And it's—it and it—kind of, you're always sort of second-guessing, you know, was that—you know, did—did they—well, that guy just came in and he said hi to everybody in the room but he didn't say it to me. What does that—what was that about?

TRACIE: And so there's—there's no obvious thing about it, but it can make you feel a little paranoid, a little crazy. Now I cannot put myself—I can't imagine how, you know, Surya felt in that moment. But I didn't necessarily, like, think that, you know, these prejudiced people had denied her this. If anything, I felt more like, man, it really must suck to be the only Black woman skating at that kind of level and not really understand why things are happening. Or maybe it must be like a very confusing situation to be in. And that is—and—and it was more like empathy. I don't know, you know, if—if there was racism. Quite frankly, Yuka Sato is an amazing skater.

ROBERT: I think you're right. It's very legitimate to feel like you can't put your finger on this feeling which never goes away.

TRACIE: No.

ROBERT: And never resolves. And is always there, and always makes you feel weird.

MATT KIELTY: What happens after the ...

JAD: That's our producer Matt Kielty.

MATT: ... after the ceremony?

TRACIE: I think the—I think the—the rep that she got after this moment was that she was a sore loser. And that she was defiant, that she had a bad attitude.

JAD: And does she quit at this point, or ...

LATIF: No, she keeps going.

TRACIE: She—she competed again in the World Championships in 1995, the very next year. And she came in second.

LATIF: Again.

TRACIE: Again.

LATIF: So three years in a row.

ROBERT: In a similar pattern? Was there like, just one sort of ...

LATIF: That one wasn't as close.

TRACIE: As close.

LATIF: Yeah, but—but she was second again for the third year.

MATT: Did she skate in a lot of other competitions after '95, or ...

LATIF: I think she ...

TRACIE: Yeah, the various, you know, European championships. You know, Skate America. There’s a whole bunch of them.

LATIF: Yeah, she was doing a lot.

MATT: She never—she never wins?

LATIF: Not at the Olympics. Not at the World Championships. No.

JAD: So she never gets first?

LATIF: Uh ...

ROBERT: What?

LATIF: I guess it depends on how you define "first."

JAD: What do you mean?

LATIF: Well, you'll see. So that actually takes us right back to the beginning.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: We're here live at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning in Japan.]

TRACIE: So to jump forward but rewind, we're in Nagano, Japan. 1998 Winter Olympics.

SURYA BONALY: I knew it was my last Olympics, and last major—major big competition. And everything was fine, until the day before the—the short program, I—I pull a muscle.

LATIF: Her left leg.

SURYA BONALY: And I couldn't lift—I couldn't do anything.

LATIF: To make matters worse, Surya at that moment was already recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon.

SURYA BONALY:  People had to lift—to carry me to walk stairs, because I couldn't get stairs. So they had to lift me to go to my room because, you know, at the Olympic Village I couldn't walk. You know, I'm broken, I'm damaged. I'm like a used car that's ready—good for, like, you know, for trash. I was like—you know, really I was so messed up between my legs and my Achilles. I was like, oh it's a disaster. And the doctors say maybe we should withdraw. I'm like, no, I'm already here. You know, I don't want to—to just maybe retire. It's my—probably my last competition. I don't want to just retire like that. Just give me anything you can. I have to keep going.

LATIF: And so on the final day ...

TRACIE: She says that she, you know, between ...

SURYA BONALY: Medicine, massage, acupuncture, pills ...

LATIF: ... she goes back out on the ice.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And is now getting ready to skate for her country.]

LATIF: She's in this golden blue sequined outfit. And she starts her routine. You can tell she's favoring one leg, but she manages to land a few jumps.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Didn't work for the salchow.]

LATIF: Then she falls.

TRACIE: She gets back up, keeps going through her routine.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: There's the triple salchow.]

TRACIE: And then she says she just got to this point where she just knew she couldn't do it.

SURYA BONALY: It was so much in pain, and towards the end of the program I was supposed to go for two more triples, and I say, "You know what? I'm not—I don't feel it. I know I'm going to crash. I can't do—I'm not capable. My leg is not with me anymore."

LATIF: And then what comes to her is that there is this move that she has in her repertoire that she can do, but it's illegal.

SURYA BONALY: I had a special thing in my back pocket, and I say "Hey, I can do it. It's my last—it's my last competition."

LATIF: Was this all going through your mind as you were skating?

SURYA BONALY: Yeah. Oh yeah, totally. You know, me, it's like a computer, you know? If I would have missed something, a jump, I'd say, "Okay. Here—I can fit a triple here, over there I can do a combo triple-triple. I know I need to fit something."

LATIF: You're like the GPS lady. You're, like, recalculating.

SURYA BONALY:  Yeah, totally re-routing. "Okay, what do we have to do right now?"

LATIF: So in her re-routing, she turns around from skating forwards to skating backwards, picks up speed just like she's about to do a triple, but instead ...

TRACIE: She does a backflip.

LATIF: But not any old backflip.

TRACIE: She swings one leg over ...

LATIF: Does the splits in the air.

JAD: Upside down?

LATIF: Yeah.

TRACIE: And then she lands on one foot.

ROBERT: Whoa!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Oh! Oh my gosh!]

ROBERT: Wait a minute, when you do the backflip do you go—do your skates go up towards the ceiling and then come back down underneath you again?

TRACIE: Yes!

LATIF: It's a back—it's a backflip!

TRACIE: It's a ...

ROBERT: I guess I'm having trouble.

TRACIE: I don't know how else to ...

JAD: Wait, wait. Why was it illegal?

LATIF: Well, it's illegal because it's so dangerous. Also, she says, you're supposed to land all your jumps on one foot. But she did that here.

SURYA BONALY:  Like, oh good, you did it on one foot. Just hold, hold. At this point, just hold. And it couldn't be, like, totally illegal, because as long as I land on one foot, maybe we'll be—we will think about.

[crowd cheers]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: And she finishes her program with her back to the judges.]

SURYA BONALY: And, you know, usually you skate, you perform, you smile in front of the camera, boom they give you the marks, next skater. For me, it took like 10 minutes. Seriously, 10 minutes for people think about what should we do? It was like, oh my God, they didn't know what to do with me. And I say "Whatever, just put a zero and so we can move on."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Here are the marks. Did she get nailed?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Absolutely. 4.8, 5.2. She knew. How do you get noticed in Olympic competition? Do a backflip.]

JAD: So they didn't change their mind about the backflip in the end?

TRACIE: Nope.

LATIF: So she ends up finishing tenth.

SURYA BONALY: Yeah, I finished tenth. It's okay.

LATIF: Now afterwards, a lot of people interpreted that backflip as a big fat middle finger up to the entire skating world. "I know you don't want me to, but I'm gonna do this anyway." But when I asked Surya if that's what was happening, she said ...

SURYA BONALY: No. I don't know why people keep saying that. You know, I was just trying to be happy.

LATIF: She said she just wanted something that was hers.

SURYA BONALY: Yes. Yes, yeah.

LATIF: Had anyone ever done this backflip onto one blade before?

SURYA BONALY: No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm the one who created this one. It's why it's called the Bonaly.

LATIF: Oh, that's called the Bonaly?

SURYA BONALY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, so anyone who did it ...

LATIF: Wow!

SURYA BONALY: Yeah.

LATIF: You're the first person in the history of the human race who has done that.

SURYA BONALY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So knock on wood I hope, you know, I'll be able to die in peace. Don't steal my backflip, it's mine.

LATIF: I'll do my best.

SURYA BONALY: Yeah. But yeah, it's mine.

ROBERT: So I'm just curious, like, what has happened since this story ended?

TRACIE: Well, she retired from figure skating after the '98 Olympics. She continues to do ice shows occasionally, but right now I think the main thing that she's doing is she's coaching. She lives in Minnesota.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

TRACIE: And she's coaching young skaters, yeah.

LATIF: But—but, like, when we asked people, like, oh did she—did she change the sport? Did she change figure skating? The answer they would keep giving to us was no. No, she didn't.

TRACIE: Yeah, a lot of people were like, "Eh." You know, it's not like all of a sudden, you know, figure skating rinks across the country, across the world were flooded with little Black girls learning their salchows and their lutzes and things like that. I will say from my—from what I can tell, for the first time that there are—there's more than one Black skater competing at the same time, internationally, at least.

ROBERT: What about backflips? Are there backflips everywhere?

LATIF: No. No backflips.

TRACIE: No backflips.

LATIF: Sadly.

ROBERT: Are they still illegal?

LATIF: They are still illegal.

ROBERT: Oh, wow.

LATIF: Yeah.

TRACIE: Yes. So she was just this sort of, like, almost—this sort of blip on the skating scene, where she was just—you know, no one was like her before, and there hasn't really been anyone like her since.

LATIF: But—but there is this kind of ironic thing, I guess, which is that if you took her and—and—and you put her in competition today, if she was competing on the world stage today, she would probably do better than she did back then. They've changed the—the scoring system so now you get points for doing the kinds of power moves that she was doing way back when. And even if you—if you spill, even if you fail at those moves, you—you still get points.

TRACIE: You get points for trying.

LATIF: Yeah, just for—for daring. And Surya was—was daring. She was a darer.

JAD: Producers Latif Nasser and Tracie Hunte. Tracie spent the last few months with us producing that story as part of the WNYC fellows program. Tracie we will miss you a lot. The piece was produced by Matt Kielty. Original music from Matt and also from Dylan Keefe. Special thanks to Vanessa Riley, Moira North, skaters Elisa Angeli and Christian Erwin from the Ice Theater of New York. And to Ed Haber for recording it all, and a very heartfelt thanks to Marilyn Wiggins. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Start of message.]

[TONYA HARDING: Hi, Latif. This is Tonya calling.]

[SANDRA BEZIC: Hi. This is Sandra Bezic.]

[MARIE-REINE LE GOUGNE: Marie-Reine Le Gougne speaking. Radiolab is produced by Jab Abumrad.]

[TONYA HARDING: Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design.]

[SANDRA BEZIC: Soren Wheeler is senior editor.]

[MARIE-REINE LE GOUGNE: Jamie York is our senior producer.]

[TONYA HARDING: Our staff includes ...]

[SANDRA BEZIC: ... Simon Adler, Brenna Farrell, David Gebel ...]

[MARIE-REING LE GOUGNE: ... Matt Kielty, Robert Krulwich ...]

[TONYA HARDING: ... Latif Nasser. Malissa O'Donnell, Kelsey Padgett ...]

[SANDRA BEZIC: ... Arianne Wack and Molly Webster. With help from Alexandra Lee Young ...]

[TONYA HARDING: ... Tracie Hunte, Stephanie Tam and Micah Loweinger.]

[SANDRA BEZIC: Our fact-checkers are Eva Dasher and Michelle Harris. I wonder if you can hear the truck outside.]

[TONYA HARDING: Hope that’s okay.]

[SANDRA BEZIC: And on behalf of everyone at Radiolab ...] 

[TONYA HARDING: Thank you.]

[MARIE-REINE LE GOUGNE: Thank you.]

[SANDRA BEZIC: Thank you for listening. Bye bye.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

 

-30-

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

 

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.