Ludmila Belousova, a petite Russian figure skater who, with her husband, Oleg Protopopov, dominated pairs competition in the 1960s, winning two Olympic gold medals for the Soviet Union with a dreamy style that evoked the Bolshoi Ballet, has died. She was 81.
The Russian state news agency R-Sport said her death was confirmed on Friday by the skating coaches Alexei Mishin and Tamara Moskvina. There was no immediate information on the cause or where she died.
Belousova and Protopopov defected to Switzerland from the Soviet Union in 1979 and in recent years had lived in Grindelwald, Switzerland, while spending summers in Lake Placid, N.