Nepela Sexuality: Figure Skating Legend Speaks Out

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A neighbor, a passionate nimrod, was carelessly cleaning a shotgun across the street on the fourth floor a few years ago. Suddenly, a terrifying bang rang out in an apartment building in Prague’s Strašnice. Figure skating judge Olga Žáková, who has lived there for almost 60 years, snapped: “If I just went to the kitchen for tea, it’s all over me.” The bullet scattered the front door, shrapnel broke a piece of massive mosaic around the corner, broke the handle of the living room door.

As soon as the neighbor from the second floor learned all the details, she advised acquaintances on TV that it was an ideal interior for filming a crime series.

The messenger from the television actually came, looked over everything and just wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t matter if there was a corpse lying in the apartment during the filming: “You know I was scared and said no. For God’s sake, a corpse! But he added that it would be the actress Jana Boušková, and I couldn’t refuse that so I wouldn’t invite her on.”

This time, she invited the Seznam Zpráv editor to her home, a perfectly tidy apartment full of books and memories of figure skating. “Would you like some Olines? Those are my favorite cookies. Sesame and Oatmeal. They’re named like me.”

A while before, she had gone to see a movie at the cinema as requested Nepal. She should have tentatively awarded him marks for technical skill and then for artistic impression. Exactly as she was used to as a renowned figure skating judge.

What about the result, Mrs. Olga?

I can’t say I was completely disappointed. But he didn’t excite me. You know me, I’m quite critical, I can find mistakes and name them. I felt that some scenes were unnecessarily long. I would cut more. I left the cinema thinking: Ondrej Nepela was not like that. Ondrejko was disciplined, obeyed his word. But the young Trojan?

What bothered you about Josef Trojan, who played Nepela?

He is cute, big dark eyes, shy look, but he seems too tall to me. In fact, Ondrejko was disciplined, disciplined, he even allowed himself to be trained. He had great step variations, he was musical. How light it was, you felt like it was still flying over the ice. This was not what the young Trojan did. On the other hand, I liked his trainer, as if she had fallen out of Hilda Múdra’s eye. Character, diction, gestures.

Hilda Múdra was a Slovak Austrian. She would have lived to be a hundred on the first of January.

We knew each other very well. She was almost like a hen who took care of her girls and boys not only on the ice. That’s why she wasn’t called Mrs. Trainer, let alone fellow trainer, but aunt. The children knew from an early age that as soon as they listened, they had Hilda’s support.

Somehow you dreamed, Mrs. Olga.

Because I remembered my mother, who was a professor of French and German. After the war, she could not teach German at all and French only for a few hours. My brother and I mocked her stupidly, saying that she was only an elementary teacher, that is, a first-grade teacher at an elementary school. She taught the children the same thing over and over again. But not to dissuade Hilda.

We certainly had a lot of respect for each other. I mainly judged the dances, and Hilda was angry that I wasn’t one of the judges in the men’s competitions either. She thought I could help.

She could. It was more or less what was asked of me. I was a big patriot, I’ll admit it. As soon as it was possible, I tried to hold our skaters. Referees from the former Soviet republics, with the exception of the Baltics, again sided with the Russians. You could say that the assessment at that time was due to the time. Now the highest and lowest marks are cut. Previously, in Ondra Nepela’s time, two-thirds were decided by compulsory rides.

To explain it to those who haven’t experienced it. During the compulsory rides, the figure skaters had to perform predetermined spirals, complex arcs and figures of eight. Precision and edge control of the skates was required. You, the judges, evaluated purity and fluency.

And the precision of curves, reversals, counter-reversals. We had special rubber buffs that didn’t slip and didn’t break the ice at the same time. We looked at how accurate the curves were. Some colleagues calmly lay down on the ice to be as close as possible to the overpasses. Ondrejko was perfect in that. Picked up. Quiet. Unnaturally obedient. If it weren’t for the mandatory figures, he would never have become an Olympic champion in Sapporo (1972). He was the opposite of the explosive temperament that, for example, Jozef Sabovčík had.

Let’s go back to the movie I invited you to see: doesn’t the Trojan actor show a plucked Nepela?

I remembered one moment when Hilda Múdra forgot that she had Ondrejko in training – and he rode one figure for maybe two hours. He did what he was told. He did it until he got tired of it, until Aunty said enough. You know, I don’t go to the cinema very much, except for movies recommended by my youngsters. I went to Vlny. And now to Nepel. There were seven of us in the hall, including me. I heard every movement, looked at the screen and said to myself: I bow to Trojan for his performance, but Ondrejko was simply different.

What else did you perceive?

Mainly memories. As Ondrejko told me, he was looking forward to the revue so that he could finally sell what was in it. Go to the other side of figure skating. Do not necessarily drive according to the drawn circles on the ice.

He showed many times that the referees are not indifferent to him. I remember one of the first races when I was the judge and he was driving. It was September. France? Probably yes. Everything ended and we went to the disco together. So it was dinner for the judges, fun for the competitors. Ondrej arrived at a fancy restaurant, wearing a shirt and thin pants, it was cold outside. I say: Ondra, do you have any money at all? You know, if needed, they probably won’t pay for your drinks.

He pointed to his moccasins and took one off his foot: That’s a waste, Mrs. Olga! He had a few francs in his shoes. There might have been twenty of them.

While Nepela eventually left the revue, you were, among other things, rescuing journalists.

Because they didn’t understand the individual jumps. Salchow, axel, rittberger, lutz… It was by chance that I got to the broadcaster Míl Holman, who once caught me on the stand: Olinka, will you save me? A live broadcast was being broadcast. Poor Mila. He only knew football and cycling, figure skating meant nothing to him. So I sat next to him and hinted. From which leg and how who rebounds, how many turns did someone make. And my colleague Míla was suddenly a king with my help and received huge praise on the radio for how he can do it all.

Is figure skating a fair sport?

It can’t be, even though the champions usually win the execution. Otherwise, you cannot measure art on skates, even though the new marking method tries to do so. The same is true for gymnastics, trampolines or diving. Look, the subjective view always decides.

And what about the view of Nepela. The film ends with the Olympic gold in Sapporo, it does not talk about his further life. He died of HIV when he was thirty-eight. He had a daughter, Natasha. Was he gay?

I remember a book by Graham Greene that I once read. Her name was May we borrow your husband? I saw Ondrejko exactly as the model for the book. An ordinary, perceptive, shy and perhaps too sensitive boy, who in a certain situation finds himself at the crossroads of life. He liked beautiful women, courted them, understood them. Especially with Hanka Mašková, our amazing figure skater

u, with whom he formed a pair on the ice. With the singer Eva Pilarová too.

I don’t know, but he had a daughter. The opposite sexual orientation or bisexuality was a taboo in our country for many years. When Nepela died, it was compulsory to write about lymph node cancer.

The movie doesn’t talk about that anymore.

Which I appreciate that he doesn’t die in private. It ends with the Olympics and the World Championship, Ondrejko goes to the revue and goodbye. It is always better to speak positively about people. Ondrej may have thought that he didn’t know exactly who he was. He didn’t show himself. And during the revue, he might have discovered something that caught his eye. It was not taboo in America.

How did you feel when you found out he was dying?

In March 1972, I was at the funeral of our beautiful Hanka (Mašková), who died in a crash near Paris. God, it’s an eternal shame that she didn’t step on the gas, but on the brake. She didn’t have to hit the truck. They both passed each other on Ruzyna. Hanka in a coffin, Ondrejko on the way to the next races. I don’t think they were lovers, Hanka was more like dating the lyricist Jiří Štaidl.

You yourself have spent your whole life with figure skating, and you still commentate for Czech Television. But you also taught aesthetics and art history at the Czech Technical University. You also accompany tourists.

I tell young people that I am mainly a motivational element. A lady in her eighties. Now I’m looking forward to the Olympics in Milan. At the end of March, there will be the World Championship in Prague, a big event full of nostalgia. I am ordering training tickets for my friends, because the main competitions are sold out long ago. And then? I already have a contracted flight to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as a tourist guide.

Do you mind that there will be Russian figure skating in the Olympic Milan?

As soon as the war comes, I always remember Karel Čapek and his drama Travel. How senseless it all is, yet the mother will say to her last son willingly: Go! As a mother of two children, two grandsons and two granddaughters, I would say: You are not going anywhere!

As long as you are killing, you are a state at war and you are not allowed to race.