After retiring from amateur competition following the 1998 Winter Olympics, Surya Bonaly transitioned into professional skating. She turned an existing relationship with America’s Champions on Ice into a long touring gig, during which, she told Ladepeche, she had considerably more creative freedom than she had in amateur competition. Her ties to the United States were strong enough that she obtained American citizenship and moved to Las Vegas; ironically enough for a skating champion, she tired of the cold winters in her first American home, Boston.
Bonaly’s skating career began suffering due to ongoing lower back pain. She put off seeing a doctor for as long as he could, but when it became too much to bear, she went and found that she had noncancerous cysts on her spine. Surgery removed her cysts but left her left leg numb from the knee down, forcing her to retire from performing.
The surgery wasn’t the end of her association with skating, though. Bonaly moved into coaching and temporarily moved to Minnesota to be closer to her fellow skater-turned-teacher boyfriend Pete Biver. She maintained a six-day-a-week schedule, driving between multiple skating rings. While she eventually moved back to Las Vegas, Bonaly continues to coach, both in America and abroad.
