Boris KhodorovskyAll materialsTwo-time Olympic champion, four-time world and European champion Oleg Protopopov celebrates his 90th birthday in distant Lake Placid. Although he always emphasized that he considers himself a Leningrader. My mother, the ballerina Agniya Gruzdeva-Grott, instilled a love for art. The first skates were presented to Oleg by his stepfather, the famous poet of the «Silver Age» Dmitry Censor. As Protopopov always emphasized, in the terrible winter of the siege, the Censor saved them and their mother by taking them out of Leningrad. Figure skating was so fascinated that even while serving in the Navy, he did not leave classes. But I didn’t serve in a sports company! “I was also lucky that the first coach Ivan Bogoyavlensky achieved a transfer to Leningrad,” Protopopov recalled in an interview with a correspondent that took place 20 years ago during the European Championship in Lausanne. “First he served in Severomorsk, then — in the Gryaznaya Bay. When they were transferred to Leningrad, they assigned divisions of ships under construction to the boatswain team. Once a week they gave a leave to the shore, it was possible to train. It was happiness!»
The unity of two heartsThe couple Lyudmila Belousova/Oleg Protopopov was perceived by figure skating fans as a single entity. Few people know that Valentina Toroshina was Protopopov's first partner.
"She weighed 69 kg, but we even managed to perform some support", he recalled with a smile.
They met Belousova by chance. In 1954, a coaching seminar was held in Moscow, which brought together specialists from all over the USSR. At that time, there was only one artificial ice rink in the country in the children's park of the Dzerzhinsky district of the capital in Maryina Roshcha. Sailor Protopopov was sent there from Leningrad instead of one of the sick coaches. Belousova, a student at the Institute of Transportation Engineers, who was not a coach and was not even going to become one, was sent to a seminar to simply feed her. The participants were entitled to food stamps. Belousova and Protopopov were the youngest participants in the seminar. They were put on the ice to demonstrate paired elements to age specialists. When there was a pause in the workshop, they themselves decided to try something new. At that moment, one of the coaches saw them and asked: «How long have you been skating together?» Having learned that it was only half an hour, he did not believe it and ardently convinced that it was impossible to achieve such interaction in less than two years. It was then that Ludmila and Oleg had the idea to become a couple.
It was not so easy to implement the plan. Protopopov continued to serve, Belousova had to move to Leningrad, fortunately, there was a similar institute in the Northern capital. Already in January 1955, the Belousova/Protopopov pair made their debut at the USSR Championship. Almost from the very beginning of their joint performances, they looked on the ice as a single whole. “The texture of partners is very important in figure skating,” Protopopov convinced in Lausanne. “This is a purely ballet term that is also suitable for skaters. Luda and I had perfect compatibility. Especially by the standards of the 50s of the last century. «But Belousova added:» The biofield of partners is no less important. If they repel each other, the couple will never work out. «Twenty years ago, Lyudmila claimed that her biofields merged with Oleg from the first training session in Maryina Roshcha. Protopopov said that he still does not know when this happened.