The Original Pair

A death spiral starts with a firm grip. The man anchors his skate in the ice, and his partner pitches downward, using him as a pivot. It is a centrifuge of two bodies. At its zenith, the man leans to counter-weigh the woman’s force of inertia, her body nearly parallel to the ice while orbiting his. The move collapses if either partner doesn’t commit fully with hand grip, bodyweight or blade-edging. A break of trust or focus can mean a head-first fall to the ice for the female partner, but a stable, smoothly-paced spiral can be hypnotic.

Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov are famed for the variations they created on the death spiral, which they named the life spiral, the love spiral, and the cosmic spiral. Clearly they recognized more passion and beauty in the move than dread or danger. Skating, for them, has always been more artistry than athletics.

Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played as the couple started their performance during the 1968 Grenoble Olympics, one that would transform figure skating through its innovation. All their routines told a story, and in this one Beethoven’s life was depicted though movements that figure skating commentator Dick Button described as “utter perfection.” The Protopopovs, as the couple is known, took their second gold medal (their first was in the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics). They also commenced a streak of Russian dominance; Russians would take first place in pairs figure skating for the next forty-two years, the longest winning streak in Olympic history.

Yet 1968 also marked the beginning of hostility between the Protopopovs and the Soviet government. Oleg and Ludmila were 35 and 32, respectively, and the sport was becoming more physical.

“Your style does not exist anymore,” Ludmila recalled a Russian official telling her after Grenoble. She and Oleg skated classically, while competitors were becoming more acrobatic with each passing year. Their successors to Olympic gold, Irina Rodnina and Alexei Ulanov, were praised for their speed and power as they performed unmatched lifts and jumps. Meanwhile, the Protopopovs were aging alongside the classical style they mastered – one said to be shifting to the domain of theatrical ice shows.

Ludmila and Oleg opposed this notion passionately, and hoped above all else to continue competing as long as possible. In 1969 they won third place in the World Championships and second in the European Championships. In 1972, the year of the Sapporo Olympics, they took third in the Soviet Championships. They had no pretensions of a gold-medal finish that year at the Olympics, but had a strong reason to believe they could still make the podium. At the least, they argued, two radically different styles of skating performed against one another would benefit the sport.

Soviet officials didn’t let it happen. The Protopopovs were also barred from further competition.

“Of course we were mad,” Ludmila said. “How would you feel if somebody were to tell you...”

“... If someone were to tell you cannot live?” Oleg broke in. “Skating is our life.”

The Protopopovs worked reluctantly as “guest stars” in theatrical ice shows for the next seven years, until 1979, when they were allowed to travel to the West to perform. As their airplane pitched onto a Switzerland runway, a Soviet official told them, in no uncertain terms, what they could and could not do on foreign soil. This was an old routine. Oleg and Ludmila had taken part in a number of skating tours outside the USSR since their forced retirement from competition. Exit visas, however, were becoming harder for them to get. Directors were also pressuring them to hang up their skates and coach – they could sense another forced retirement coming.

The official told them they must report all their plans, movements, and contacts off the ice. They promised, as always, to keep the Soviet embassy updated. Ludmila and Oleg remember this moment clearly, for that was when the uneasiness really hit them. Both accepted the fact that they probably would never see their family or friends again. They had told no one that they were about to defect.

“Of course we were nervous,” Ludmila said.

“If they caught us,” said Oleg, “they would immediately kill us.”

They reported false information about their plans and, after a performance in Grindelwald, sought shelter in an undeclared hotel. Then they asked the Swiss government for political asylum.

An American newspaper quoted an unnamed sports official in Moscow on the day of the defection: “[The Protopopovs] had every benefit here. For athletes of that caliber, there are no problems.”

But the Protopopovs saw their defection as a necessity, not a choice. Within Soviet ice skating troupes such as the Leningrad Ice Ballet, the ideology of equality meant identical salaries for every skater, regardless of background or ability, and resentment from others when the Protopopovs’ name outshined theirs. Directors and co-skaters told them that their skating style was too competitive and athletic, that ex-Olympians had no place at a theatrical ice show, that they were making the other skaters nervous.

“In the Soviet Union they were jealous,” Ludmila said. She claimed that other skaters went so far as to pour various liquids onto the ice before she and Oleg practiced, hoping they would fall. While she said fans and regular people expressed only gratitude when they skated professionally, officials and fellow skaters were a completely different story. In the Soviet Union, the future of their skating – their life – was in the hands of those they believed wanted to undermine it most.

like other defectors, the Protopopovs were blacklisted and their legacy was forced into dis-remembrance.

When attending World and European Cham­pionships after their emigration, they occasionally ran into Soviet skaters and coaches, many of whom they had counted as friends before their defection. But, either out of fear or disrespect, Oleg and Ludmila were almost always ignored. Oleg remembers meeting a former coach in a public bathroom in Germany during this time. When the bathroom door was shut, they spoke, but as soon as it creaked open, the coach seized up and turned away in silence. Such was the treatment of “enemies of the state.” The first time a Russian journalist talked to them, they said, was in 1989. But rehabilitation, the couple said, could not reverse a decade of attacks on their reputation.

The Swiss government granted the couple citizenship in 1995. They do not own a house, but split their time between rented apartments in Grindelwald and Lake Placid, in Upstate New York. They coach skaters and continue to train daily for shows they perform bi-annually. Their relationship to Russia has also warmed since 2003, when then-Minister of Sport Vyacheslav Fetisov made a first serious attempt at a rapprochement.

Upon the recommendation of President Vladimir Putin, Fetisov invited the pair to St. Petersburg to attend the Grand Prix of Figure Skating. At the St. Petersburg Ice Palace, a crowd of 15,000 gave the couple an ovation fit for 1968.

The Protopopovs always make it clear they are not bitter towards the Russian public. Yet they also make it clear they won’t forget past wrongs.

Before they left St. Petersburg, Oleg and Ludmila visited Volkovskoye Cemetery. A number of friends, including ballerina Natalia Dudinka and choreographer Konstantin Sergeyev, were buried there while they were gone, as was Oleg’s mother.

“We are not sure how we should forget, after those years,” Oleg said.

The pair has visited Russia four times since 2003, and met Putin during the 2005 World Championships in Moscow. The Russian government also sends them annual birthday wishes. Yet they say they are still reminded that their escape, held by many as no less than treachery, is also not completely forgiven in Russia.

This year Oleg and Ludmila hoped to receive an invitation to the Sochi Olympics, which marks 50 years since their first gold medal in 1964.

“Maybe they have so many sportsmen and gold medalists, and that’s why they don’t want to invite us. Really, there’s no reason – we aren’t officially Russian,” Ludmila said. “Of course, for us it’s a bit sad, because we opened the door to 46 years of gold for Russian skaters.” RL