Breaking the stereotype
Born in Nice, France, Bonaly was adopted by a white couple who fostered her interest in sport. Bonaly started out in gymnastics, providing her with an unusual jumping style and an additional power to her performance that other skaters did not have.
Her first coach, Didier Gailhaguet, deliberately exaggerated her “otherness”. In 1995, Gailhaguet admitted to Sports Illustrated that he had knowingly fabricated aspects of Bonaly’s upbringing: That she had been found abandoned by her parents on a beach in Madagascar; that she subsisted on a diet of birdseed; that she had never gone to school, ignoring the fact that her mother, a qualified teacher, home-schooled her.
To truly understand Bonaly’s position in figure skating it is important to note that the sport is exceptionally white. Sports writer Johnette Howard has argued that female skaters have had to follow two variants of the “ice princess” theme, either “chaste and elegant” or “perky and cute as a button”. Bonaly was neither.
The issue came to a head in the 1994 World Championships. Bonaly skated a near perfect programme, yet Japanese skater Yuka Sato won gold.
Bonaly’s technical score outweighed Sato’s, but the latter had the edge in artistry. The Los Angeles Times explained that it “came down to a choice between Yuka Sato’s artistry and dynamic footwork and Surya Bonaly’s gymnastic jumping”.
The judges went with Sato. After receiving her silver medal on the podium Bonaly removed it. Boos rained in from the crowd, as did criticism from the press and skating world, where her protest was described as a “temper tantrum”. But her decision to remove the medal was rooted in frustration.
After the event, Bonaly explained: “It happened too much. Also, because I was a woman. I think if I would have been a man and did the same thing, it would have been OK, because, ‘He’s a guy, he’s a dude’.
“Because a woman was supposed to be dressed cute and shut up and just accept it. And, at this point, I’m like, ‘I don’t care what kind of sex I belong to, I need to show that should not happen any more.’”