The secret of Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov: they became the country’s first Olympic champions

Before the 1964 Olympic Games, Belousova and Protopopov were not favorites in the fight for gold medals. On the eve of the start, victory was predicted for the German figure skaters Marika Kilius and Hans-Jurgen Bäumler, the current world champions and multiple European champions. It was they who won their next European Championship two weeks before the Games.

True, already at the European Championships everything could have happened differently. Belousova and Protopopov did not yet have international titles, but their skating was mesmerizing. The fate of the gold medals was decided by the free program – the points scored by Soviet and German skaters before it were approximately the same.

…During the performance of the “swallow”, the Soviet athletes fell. Lyudmila Belousova hit a hairpin that ended up on the ice. Then they will say: what a pity that the “invisible precious connection” born during the rental was broken and destroyed so unexpectedly. And they themselves will ask the question: “But aren’t we able to restore it?”

In Innsbruck at the Olympic Games it was possible to win only by skating flawlessly. Before the start of the free program, Protopopov inspected the ice: the new hairpin should not interfere with the triumph. And “Dreams of Love” to the music of Franz Liszt became victorious – the first gold medals in the history of Soviet figure skating! “When your skates obey you, you can create miracles,” said Lyudmila.

At the 1968 Grenoble Games, the couple again became first, winning the World and European Championships four times between the Games. But in the new Olympic cycle, titled athletes at domestic competitions began to lose to their opponents in technical difficulty. The young couples were captivating with their speed and extremely complex lifts. But Belousova and Protopopov remained geniuses in their spirituality and continued to create art. Only time developed pairs figure skating in a different direction.

They said that they were “reproached for being too theatrical,” while competitors were given the green light to participate in tournaments. At the 1971 USSR Championship they only finished in the top six, and in 1972, when the country’s first three pairs were absent, they finished third. Oleg Protopopov accused the judges of conspiracy. In Sapporo 1972, Irina Rodnina and Alexey Ulanov became Olympic champions.

“We wanted to deepen the connection between sport and art, we wanted to prove that figure skating is now much smarter, more interesting, richer than it sometimes seems to some coaches and athletes, that it no longer has the right to live according to the old canons, that, once awakened, the mind and thirst knowledge, you cannot stop the process of figure skating development. That’s why we stayed in the sport after Innsbruck, that’s why we stayed in the sport after the victory in Grenoble,” the skaters recalled.

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…Now it seems impossible, but Belousova and Protopopov did not come to figure skating as children. And the couple that conquered the world and made people talk about themselves for many years got together when Lyudmila was 19 and Oleg was 22 years old. We met at a trainers’ seminar in Moscow, then Lyudmila moved to Oleg in Leningrad. They created their own pair – on the ice and in life, however, they no longer shared these concepts, one could not exist without the other. Ice, search, creativity, penetration into music and enchanting choreography – this was their life.

Having ceased to be included in the national team to perform at the main tournaments, Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov ended their careers. But they didn’t leave the ice: they worked in the Leningrad Ballet on Ice. True, even there they did not find the creative freedom that they had strived for all their lives: “They said that we were causing harm, standing across the road, and our repertoire did not fit into the ballet repertoire.” In 1979, when by ballet standards they had long been threatened with retirement, which would have meant the inability to skate and perform, Belousova and Protopopov asked for political asylum in Switzerland during a tour abroad. They settled in Grindelwald, Switzerland, where there was year-round ice. There they could skate and continue their search for ice art.

“You know that in figure skating there are so-called “death spirals”, “todes”: the partner seems to be hanging above the ice, tipping over on her back, almost touching her head to the ice, and at the same time, held by her partner’s hand, makes circles around him. In the beginning there was only one “todes”, and very few performed it. The partner slid backwards on the outer edge of the skate. But already in the early sixties, dozens of couples began to perform this “todes”. And then we had the idea to create a new “todes”. We thought this: if there is a “todes” back on the outer edge, then why not do it on the inner one too? The new “todes” was created in 1966. In the international book on figure skating, it is called the “Protopopov spiral,” and we call it a “cosmic spiral,” the skaters said in their memoirs.

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“Do you think we weren’t patriots? — Oleg Protopopov asked in an interview. – Yes, we were ready to give everything for the sake of the Motherland. Otherwise, why would we skate when I had bleeding at the Olympic Games in Grenoble – I had kidney stones and terrible colic, but surgery was impossible: with a cut abdominal muscle, I would have to forget about supports… We did not allow ourselves to be controlled. This was probably the whole essence of our conflicts.”

In 2003, for the first time after the escape, they flew to Moscow and St. Petersburg. They were then invited by Vyacheslav Fetisov to the Grand Prix finals in figure skating in St. Petersburg. And Protopopov, accepting the invitation, was not slow to clarify: “Why is this all of a sudden and in what capacity? Isn’t it wedding generals?”

“MK” met famous skaters at Sheremetyevo. They then flew to Moscow several times. And they even attended the Olympic Games in Sochi. But that was the first arrival, deafening both for those who arrived and for those who greeted us. “Lyudmila, Oleg! Are your skates with you? – “Of course, we want to train in St. Petersburg, at Yubileiny. Remember, as they say, youth, although we are not old. We were invited by the Chairman of the State Sports Committee, Vyacheslav Fetisov, and this was the first time in 48 years of our sports life. We were not given such an honor even after the Olympic Games, when we won. Then we were greeted differently, of course, but let’s not remember the old…

Our main home is ice. Where there is ice, there is our apartment. And thoughts… We are still very grateful to our country: on the one hand, it raised us, but it could also grind us into powder. Switzerland is the country that supported us in difficult times, saved our lives, and we now have a different citizenship. But we were Russian, and we remain so…”

We asked Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov then and about one more thing: are they upset watching today’s figure skating, or are they happy? “You know, in figure skating there should be a secret, just like in a woman. When there is this mystery, then it’s interesting. No, nothing upsets us. Moreover, we are minding our own business and trying to ride the way we want. And one-day ones – they will ride and leave, and no one will ever see them again.”

…The last performance of the first Olympic champions in the history of Russian figure skating was dedicated to Lyudmila’s 80th birthday in 2016. The next year she passed away, and Oleg Protopopov, at the age of 86, performed a dance in memory of his partner at the “Evening with Champions” show. Already alone. At the end of last year, Oleg Protopopov also left. The champions carried their secret of figure skating throughout their lives.