When playing by the rules just doesn't work

"Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it."
- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

This post is about a figure skater, Surya Bonaly. Even if you're into football or basketball, or the other football, you'll appreciate this story, our hero, and maybe even figure skating by the end.

Adopted by a white couple in Nice, France, Surya Bonaly, a black baby girl, grew up to become a world-class figure skater. Her 'technical' scores were very high from a young age, but her 'artistic' scores were consistently low, costing her win after win at the World and Olympic levels.

At the time, judges were looking for 'pretty, elegant & graceful' and while Surya was praised for being 'explosive, exciting, boundless, powerful, soaring, and fearless,' she was criticized for her "raw talent." She was "too muscular" and "not elegant enough."

Her performance in the women's European Figure Skating Championships in 1991 wasn't perfect, but it did win her the title. It also won her this critique from Sandra Bezic, Canadian figure skater and commentator: "She's obviously most comfortable in the air, but what is glaring is her inability to skate - simply to move around the ice." I'm not an expert, but you can judge for yourself.

Bezic discusses - or maybe defends - her commentary in a recent Radiolab piece. The piece dances with insinuations that Surya's treatment by the figure skating judges and commentators was rooted in a subtle - or maybe not-so-subtle - racism. Bezic points to the "scratchy" sound of Surya's skating and that "she was jumping on straight lines" instead of jumping on "circles."

Personally, I don't know what to make of it all. But Surya pressed on. She even heavily adapted her unique style to conform to what judges liked at the time.

However, when I heard the story of her 1994 World Championships defeat in Japan, it became crystal clear to me that there was something about this talented young woman that set her apart from the others - something that the judges just didn't like. She lost a judge's tie-break to a Japanese favorite, Yuka Sato, when Surya had clearly surpassed Sato's technical performance.

And in 1998, after an often career-ending ruptured achilles tendon, Surya was competing in the Nagano Olympics for what would probably be the last time. Before her final routine of the multi-day competition, she pulled a muscle in her left leg.

Since the pulled muscle was so bad that she had to be carried up and down the stairs in the athlete's olympic village, her doctors suggested she withdraw from the competition. But Surya had come to Japan to compete and so she went out on the ice with a battered and weary body.

Her first few elements were fine. But then she fell - probably ruining her chances at medalling. But she immediately got up and carried on with her routine. Her legs were shot and she knew she couldn't complete her routine as planned.

"And towards the end of the program," Surya recounts, "I was supposed to go for two more triples and I said: You know what? I don't feel it. I know I'm going to crash. I can't do it - I'm not capable. My leg is not with me any more."

"I had a special thing in my back pocket," Surya thought, "I can do it - it's my last competition." So she did a backflip. A backflip that she landed on ONE FOOT. On ICE!!

(Note that she not only does a backflip, but that she also does the splits in mid-air. See the header image for a grainy screenshot.)

Surya is now both famous and infamous for a move that not only had never been done before in competition by a woman, but it had never been done by anyone in competition. The move was actually illegal.

And so, with this flip, Surya broke the rules. And sometimes when you break the rules, you're rewarded with first place, and the game must evolve around you (for example, the Fosbury Flop). But not this time: Surya was punished by the judges and came in at 10th place as a result. 

But with this rule-breaking flip, Surya entered history as a new kind of first. She was the first to ever perform the illegal 'Bonaly' backflip (which I personally think has a better sound to it than the Fosbery Flop). 

I was so inspired by this story this morning that I dropped everything I was supposed to do to write about it. Of course, I'm inspired by her "raw" talent, her hard work, her dedication, her ability to come back and compete again and again when the reward just wasn't showing up.

But what I'm most inspired by is that once she had fallen and lost her final chance at the gold medal - her final chance to get first place - she stayed true to her art and her passion, and did something much more bold. It would have been so easy, so natural, to give into the resistance in that moment. But she didn't. Just like she hadn't given in tens of thousands of times before that moment.

Surya showed the world what she's got.

At the end of the day it's not about your medals, your salary, or how many 'likes' you get. It's about defeating that invisible & insidious resistance that lives inside of you. It's about showing yourself and the world what you've got - even if no one is watching, if no one cares, and even if no one is on your side.

"The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts."
- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Watch Surya Bonaly's final 1998 Nagano Olympics performance below:

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