French figure skater Adam Xiao Him Fa became the European champion for the second time in his career. He was so confident in himself that he decided to perform a prohibited element at the box office – he did a backflip. discusses what this performance means for the scale of the Frenchman’s personality and for figure skating in general.
Making figure skating history by competing in 2023 is quite a difficult task. You can't get by with a double axel, like Dick Button in 1948, or a simple quadruple toe loop, like Kurt Browning in 1988. You have to literally and figuratively jump out of your pants to beat the records of Yuzuru Hanyu, Nathan Chen, Alexandra Trusova and Ilya Malinin. Sports ambitions have almost equaled the capabilities of the human body, leaving only a small gap for the most desperate. Or the most outstanding.
But many people want to go down in history. At least in the short-term memory of fans, it is to be trending on social networks and monetize this through the growth of subscribers. Such hype hunters have to repeat tricks previously performed by someone, as Adam Xiao Him Fa did. He is far from the first with his somersault, and his motivation is somewhat secondary.
For example, the French figure skater Suriya Bonaly jumped somersaults at the 1988 Olympics as a sign of protest against the judging, realizing that she would not see a medal. A protest somersault from a black French woman (that is, in a dress) landing on one leg in the conservative 90s was a real act of self-expression. Especially after at the previous Olympics the organizers had to persuade Suriya to get on the podium for a silver medal.
There have been other protests in history. Evgenia Medvedeva at the Russian Championships 2017 made an extra jump in the cascade. This did not affect the score and was not punishable by a fine, but in the context of the skater’s career it looked absolutely organic. Triple jumps and combinations of them were so easy for her, she so consistently performed what had previously seemed unthinkable, that her trick was completely justified. It was as if she anticipated a new era in women's singles skating. After a couple of years, the girls followed the path of quadruple jumps. There was no place for the wife in this new era, but she fulfilled her role, defiantly taking the bar above generally accepted ideas, brilliantly.
Alexandra Trusova spent her entire career in rebellion mode. Her protest is every new quadruple jump, a constant increase in technical difficulty, every triple Axel in a short program, while understanding the risks of performing it. It was as if she deliberately set herself an impossible task, and then many times could not solve it, so that at the most important moment she could still cope – five quadruple jumps at the 2022 Olympics thundered and remained in history. Trusova didn’t just say that she wanted to change figure skating – she really changed it.
Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, due to his samurai nature, received several injuries and was unable to take his third Olympic gold. He lived by performing the quadruple axel during the last years of his career and sacrificed both his health and his title for it. But he hardly regretted it, because a samurai has no goal – only a path. Yes, a few months after his departure, Ilya Malinin mastered the axel as if it was all nothing. But Malinin’s ease does not in any way devalue the story of the great Hanyu. Because his attempts to surpass his physical capabilities were sincere and really helped his followers.
Adam Xiao Him Fa, in a recent interview, said this about the somersault at the box office (he previously performed it at the Shanghai Trophy tournament): “I want to go beyond my capabilities and see that I can do more every time. The backflip is the basis for many new elements that could be introduced into figure skating. If we could go beyond some limitations, it would add originality and creativity.”
It is quite difficult to imagine how a long-existing element, performed without any author's handwriting, can add originality and creativity. In addition, it is located in the program so as not to lose more than two points of a guaranteed penalty in the assessment. So for now, the attempt to bring something new to figure skating, rather, has not been counted.
Adam is a great skater, he rightfully became the European champion twice, but so far he is changing the world only in Tik-Tok. Yes, his secondary somersault might actually go viral for a while. But not because it is something cult. But because this is fresh content today. Like cute cats, like a recipe for chocolate cake, like a no-name gymnast doing the splits between two chairs – social network users simply like other people’s attempts to be noticeable. Regardless of how much these attempts changed the world.
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