Oleg Protopopov

Oleg Protopopov
Oleg Protopopov in 1965
Personal information
Full name	Oleg Alekseyevich Protopopov
Country represented	Soviet Union
Born	(1932-07-16) 16 July 1932 (age 84) Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Height	1.75 m (5 ft 9 in)
Partner	Ludmila Belousova
Former partner	Margarita Bogoyavlenskaya
Former coach	Igor Moskvin, Petr Orlov, Stanislav Zhuk
Medal record Representing  Soviet Union Pairs' Figure skating Olympic Games 1968 Grenoble Pairs 1964 Innsbruck Pairs World Championships 1969 Colorado Springs Pairs 1968 Geneva Pairs 1967 Vienna Pairs 1966 Davos Pairs 1965 Colorado Springs Pairs 1964 Dormund Pairs 1963 Cortina d'Ampezzo Pairs 1962 Prague Pairs European Championships 1969 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Pairs 1968 Västerås Pairs 1967 Ljubljana Pairs 1966 Bratislava Pairs 1965 Moscow Pairs 1964 Grenoble Pairs 1963 Budapest Pairs 1962 Geneva Pairs

Oleg Alekseyevich Protopopov (Russian: Оле́г Алексе́евич Протопо́пов; born 16 July 1932) is a former Russian pair skater who represented the Soviet Union. With his wife Ludmila Belousova he is a two-time Olympic champion (1964, 1968) and four-time World champion (1965–1968). In 1979 the pair defected to Switzerland and became Swiss citizens in 1995. They continued to skate at ice shows and exhibitions through their seventies.

Protopopov started skating relatively late, at age 15, and was coached by Nina Lepninskaya. In 1951, he was drafted into the Baltic Fleet but used each leave to skate. His first partner was Margarita Bogoyavlenskaya, with whom he won the silver medal at the 1953 Soviet Championships.

Protopopov met Ludmila Belousova in the spring of 1954 in Moscow. She moved to Leningrad in 1955 and began training with Protopopov in 1956 following his discharge. They trained at VSS Lokomotiv and competed internationally for the USSR. Belousova and Protopopov were coached initially by Igor Moskvin and then by Petr Orlov, but parted ways with Orlov after a number of disagreements. The pair then trained without a coach at a rink in Voskresensk, Moscow Oblast. In 1961, they decided to work with Stanislav Zhuk to raise their technical difficulty.

Belousova and Protopopov debuted at the World Championships in 1958, finishing 13th. Two years later they competed at their first Olympics, placing 9th. In 1962, they made the World Championship podium for the first time, earning the silver medal. They were the first pair from the Soviet Union or Russia to win a World medal since the discipline's introduction at the 1908 World Championships (which had only three pairs competing). They also won silver at the European Championships, becoming the second Soviet pair to win medals after Nina Zhuk / Stanislav Zhuk (who won silver from 1958 to 1960).