Athletistic / Figure skating. In the history of Soviet and Russian sports there are a great many outstanding people, but even among them there are those who are talked about and remembered with a thrill of heart. These are Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, two-time Olympic champions.

It was Belousova and Protopopov who brought the USSR its first Olympic victory in figure skating. This happened in 1964 at the Games in Innsbruck (Austria). Four years later, they became two-time Olympic champions and won the 1968 Olympic Games in Grenoble (France). And after another 11 years, it was forbidden to write about their victories in newspapers and books, or to mention their names on television – they were recognized as traitors for fleeing and seeking political asylum in Switzerland. However, in this case, history took a spiral: in 2024, Belousova and Protopopov will return to their homeland forever.

In 1954, Oleg Protopopov came to Moscow for a coaching seminar. There he met Lyudmila Belousova. But it was not love at first: at first they simply decided to ride together and tried to perform some elements.

— Love came to us much later than the first meeting, although I immediately liked the thin Baltic sailor.Belousova said decades later.

Protopopov was serving at that time in Leningrad in the ranks of the USSR Navy in the Baltic Fleet, and Belousova was studying at the Moscow Institute of Railway Transport Engineers (MIIZHT). In order to travel together, Belousova was transferred to the Leningrad Institute of Railway Transport Engineers (LIIZHT) and moved to the Northern capital. Thus, already in December 1954, the athletes began training together under the leadership of Igor Moskvin.

At the time of their meeting, Protopopov was a bronze medalist of the 1953 USSR Championship, where he skated with Margarita Bogoyavlenskaya. However, immediately after the first training session with Belousova, he realized that they had a great future ahead of them. After Belousova moved to Leningrad, they grew closer every month and eventually transferred their love of figure skating to their personal relationships. So they got married in 1957 and have never parted since.

Photo source: Ogonyok magazine photo archives

Lyudmila Evgenievna and Oleg Alekseevich won their first victory at the USSR Championship only in 1962, after which they immediately took second place at the World Championship. But their most significant success awaited them two years later, when the USSR anthem was played in their honor at the 1964 Olympic Games in Innsbruck. It was they who brought the country the first gold medal in the history of figure skating!

But Protopopov and Belousova did not stop at just one Olympic victory. Throughout the next Olympic cycle, they won all the major tournaments, each becoming four-time world and European champions. As a result, at the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble, France, Belousova and Protopopov had no competitors and won their second Olympic gold medal by a wide margin.

But after the Games in Grenoble, the results of the legendary couple began to decline. The age of the skaters played a big role in this, because Protopopov was 36 years old at the time of the 1968 Olympics, and Belousova was 33. Gradually, they began to lose the competition to younger couples, among whom Irina Rodnina and Alexey Ulanov stood out. However, Protopopov and Belousova dreamed of participating in the 1972 Olympics in Sapporo (Japan), where they were supposed to go as the third couple after Rodnina with Ulanov and Lyudmila Smirnova with Andrei Suraikin. However, politics intervened in this matter.

— They didn’t even think about taking us to the Olympics in Sapporo: they promised the GDR team “bronze” in pair skating, for which the Germans were to support Sergei Chetverukhin in the singles competition, where the USSR’s position was then weaker. In fact, we were sold, although everything seemed quite decent in its form, – Protopopov recalled after the collapse of the USSR.

It became clear that under this policy they would no longer be allowed to compete at the highest level. Lyudmila and Oleg announced the end of their sports career, after which they got a job at the Leningrad Ice Ballet. This job allowed them to travel abroad frequently. However, even there, the authorities were able to seriously harm the legendary athletes. The fact is that for one performance in New York they received $ 53, while the due fee was $ 10,000. But the USSR State Concert took $ 9,947 for itself.

Photo source: personal archives of Oleg Protopopov and Lyudmila Belousova

This was the final straw. In 1979, Belousova and Protopopov went on tour with the Leningrad Ice Ballet in Switzerland and never returned to the USSR. After the speeches, they went to the police station and asked for political asylum.

In the USSR, this caused a huge scandal. The authorities simply erased them from history and deprived them of all awards and rewards. So much so that at the time when Rodnina and Ulanov crossed paths with Protopopov and Belousova at various performances, they were forced to pretend that they simply did not know Oleg and Lyudmila. This behavior was due to the fact that otherwise the most severe sanctions would have been applied to them in the USSR, since Protopopov and Belousova were officially recognized as “traitors to the Motherland.”

They never returned to the USSR. They first set foot on their native soil in 2003, when they were personally invited by Vyacheslav Fetisov, who was leading Russian sports at that time. True, their arrival was precisely an arrival, not a movement. Life in Switzerland suited Lyudmila and Oleg perfectly.

In November 2005, they visited Russia again, but now at the invitation of the St. Petersburg Figure Skating Federation. It is also important to note that Protopopov and Belousova came to their homeland for the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi. The last time they went on the ice was in September 2015, when 79-year-old Lyudmila and 83-year-old Oleg performed at “An Evening with Champions” in the United States. And two years later, on September 26, 2017, Lyudmila Belousova passed away…

Photo source: Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee

Belousova’s body was cremated in Thun (Switzerland), and Oleg Protopopov kept the urn with his wife’s ashes at home until his death. He died on October 31, 2023, and on August 18, 2024, the news came out of nowhere that Protopopov had bequeathed the transportation of his and his wife’s ashes to St. Petersburg and the burial of their remains at the Volkovskoye cemetery. The Swiss and Russian authorities have already settled all organizational issues, and around September 11, the burial of the ashes of the legendary figure skaters will take place in the Northern capital. As a result, after 45 years, Oleg Protopopov and Lyudmila Belousova will finally return to their homeland. Now – forever.

No politics or era can erase Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov from the history of our sport. They were, are and will be one of the greatest figure skaters in history, as well as the first Soviet Olympic champions in this sport. But their main victory was not even medals and titles, but the love that they carried throughout their lives. It is she who is the main victory in the lives of both of them.

Nikita Serbakov, Athletistic



Athletistic