Ludmila Yevgenyevna Belousova (; 22 November 1935 – 26 September 2017) was a Soviet and Russian pair skater who represented the Soviet Union. With her partner and husband Oleg Protopopov, she was 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. Career Belousova started skating relatively late, at age 16. after having seen the ice revue movie "Springtime on ice" with Olympic runner-up and European Champion Eva Pawlik of Austria. She trained in Moscow where she met Oleg Protopopov in the spring of 1954. She moved to Leningrad in 1955 and began training with Protopopov in 1956 following his navy discharge. The pair trained at the VSS Lokomotiv sports club and competed internationally for the USSR. They were coached initially by Igor Moskvin and then by Pyotr 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 level. Belousova and Protopopov debuted at the World Championships in 1958, finishing 13th. They competed at their first Olympics two years later, placing ninth. 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 after the pair skating discipline was introduced at the 1908 World Championships (in which only three pairs competed). Later in 1962, they won silver at the European Championships, becoming the second Soviet pair to medal after Nina Zhuk and Stanislav Zhuk (who won silver in 1958, 1959, and 1960). The pair's first major international gold medal came at the 1964 Winter Olympics. It was the first Olympic pairs gold for the Soviet Union. Belousova and Protopopov began the forty-year Soviet/Russian gold medal streak in pair skating, the longest in Olympic sports history, from 1964 to 2006. They won their first World and European gold medals in 1965, becoming the first Soviet/Russian pair to win those titles. They became Olympic champions for the second time at the 1968 Winter Olympics. At 32 and 35 years old, respectively, they were among the oldest champions in figure skating. The following season, they won the silver