Lyudmila Yevgenevna Belousova

Lyudmila Belousova
Full name	Lyudmila Yevgenevna Belousova
nation	Soviet Union
birthday	November 22, 1935
place of birth	Ulyanovsk,  Soviet Union
size	160 cm
Weight	46 kg
date of death	26th September 2017 (age 81)
Place of death	Grindelwald ,  Switzerland
Career
discipline	Pair skating
Partner	Oleg Protopopov
Trainer	Igor Moskvin, Pyotr P. Orlov
Medal table
Olympic medals 2 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 4 × 3 × 1 × EM medals 4 × 4 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold Innsbruck 1964 Couples gold Grenoble 1968 Couples  World figure skating championships silver Prague 1962 Couples silver Cortina d'Ampezzo 1963 Couples silver Dortmund 1964 Couples gold Colorado Springs 1965 Couples gold Davos 1966 Couples gold Vienna 1967 Couples gold Geneva 1968 Couples bronze Colorado Springs 1969 Couples  European figure skating championships silver Geneva 1962 Couples silver Budapest 1963 Couples silver Grenoble 1964 Couples gold Moscow 1965 Couples gold Bratislava 1966 Couples gold Ljubljana 1967 Couples gold Västerås 1968 Couples silver Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1969 Couples

Lyudmila Yevgenevna Belousova , married. Protopopowa ( Russian Людмила Евгеньевна Белоусова-Протопопова ; English Ludmila Belousova *  22. November 1935 in Ulyanovsk , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union ; † 26. September 2017 in Grindelwald , Switzerland ) was a Soviet figure skater , in the pairs figure skating started.

Life

Belousova was born in Ulyanovsk in 1935 , and later moved to Moscow with her family . She did not learn to skate until she was sixteen, after seeing the Austrian film “ Spring on the Ice ” . When the first artificial ice rink was opened in Moscow in 1951, Belousova joined the local figure skating children's training group. In 1954 she was already a "public instructor" for the next generation of figure skating in Dzerzhinsky Park and was herself a member of the youth group. After her training partner Kirill Guljajew withdrew from her sports career, she decided to do individual art skating .

In 1953 Lyudmila Belousova, then a student at the Moscow Railway Institute , met Oleg Protopopov in a competition held in Moscow . On August 28, 1954, they completed their first pair run together. After Protopopov served in the Baltic Fleet in Leningrad, Belousova was allowed to move to the Leningrad Railway Transport Engineering Institute. Her coach was first Igor Moskvin , then Pyotr Orlov , her sports clubs were Dynamo Leningrad and Lokomotive Leningrad. Then they trained independently in Voskressensk near Moscow, where they were supported by Stanislav Schuk , whom Protopopov knew from Leningrad. They got married in 1957.

Career

Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopow 1968 in Karl-Marx-Stadt

The couple made their debut at World and European Championships in 1958. At that time they were the second best Soviet figure skating couple after Nina and Stanislaw Schuk , behind whom they were Soviet runners-up from 1957 to 1959 and 1961. In 1960 in Squaw Valley they played their first Olympic Games and finished them in ninth place.

In 1962, Belousova and Protopopov became Soviet champions for the first time. They defended this title until 1968 with the exception of 1965. As reigning Soviet champions, they also won their first major international medals in 1962. In Geneva they became vice-European champions behind Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler and in Prague they became vice-world champions behind Canadians Maria and Otto Jelinek . Both at the European Championships in 1963 and 1964 , as well as at the World Championships in 1963 and 1964 , they won the silver medal behind Kilius and Bäumler. At the Olympic Games in Innsbruck in 1964, however, they managed to defeat the favored Germans. It was the first Olympic gold for the Soviet Union in figure skating. In 1965 Belousova and Protopopov became European champions for the first time in Moscow and world champions for the first time in Colorado Springs . It was the first title for the Soviet Union at world and European championships in figure skating. The couple were able to defend the World Cup title in Davos in 1966 , in Vienna in 1967 and in Geneva in 1968 , as well as the European title in 1966 in Bratislava , 1967 in Ljubljana and 1968 in Västerås . In 1968 they also defended their Olympic title at the Olympic Games in Grenoble , relegating their compatriots Tatjana Schuk and Alexander Gorelik to silver. They were at the height of their careers.

In 1969 they played their last world and European championships. Both times they had to admit defeat to the competition from their own country. At the European Championships it was enough to get silver behind Irina Rodnina and Alexei Ulanow , at the World Championships they were also pushed to bronze by Tamara Moskwina and Alexei Mishin . In 1970 and 1971, Belousova and Protopopov competed in the Soviet championships, but failed to make it onto the podium, and in 1972 they finished third again. They impressed with their elegance, but were no longer nominated for the 1972 Olympic Games in Sapporo , because the taste had meanwhile switched to the athletic running style embodied by Irina Rodnina and Alexej Ulanow and the association said that Protopopov and Belousova were too old.

From 1972 Belousova and Protopopov appeared as soloists in the ice ballet in Leningrad. In 1979 they asked for asylum during a guest tour in Switzerland . You then lived in Grindelwald and had Swiss citizenship since 1995.

Even after the age of 70, they continued to occur. In 2003 they accepted an invitation from the Russian Minister of Sports Vyacheslav Fetissov and on February 25, 2003 they returned to their Russian homeland for the first time in over 20 years.

Results

Pair skating

(with Oleg Protopopov )

Competition / year	1955	1956	1957	1958	1959	1960	1961	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968	1969	1970	1971	1972
winter Olympics						9.				1.				1.
World championships				13.		8th.		2.	2.	2.	1.	1.	1.	1.	3.
European championships				10.	7th	4th		2.	2.	2.	1.	1.	1.	1.	2.
Soviet championships	3.	4th	2.	2.	2.		2.	1.	1.	1.		1.	1.	1.	2.	4th	6th	3.

Oleg Protopopow and Lyudmila Belousova 1963 in Berlin

Web links

Commons : Ludmila Belousova  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Lyudmila Belousova in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Людмила Белоусова скончалась в Швейцарии после продолжительной болезни Report from the Russian Figure Skating Association of October 1, 2017 (Russian, accessed October 1, 2017).
2. ↑ Olympic figure skating champion Belussova has died , accessed on September 29, 2017.
3. ↑ Lyudmila Beloussowa and Oleg Protopopow in the Russian Encyclopedia ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Britannica's Encyclopedia: The Protopopows , Archives