Výnimočný krasokorčuliar z Bratislavy

He passed on to the world of the unforgettable when he was only 38 years old. Ondrej Nepela, an Olympic champion, a triple World Champion, a five-time European Champion, a World Academic Champion, a multiple Czechoslovak Figure Skating Champion, a star of a foreign ice revue, a recognised coach and a member of the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. A man, who eleven years after his death, was declared the Best Slovak Athlete of the 20th Century. The winter stadium in Bratislava, as well as a figure skating memorial competition were named after him. He would have celebrated his 70th birthday this year. He would certainly have received best wishes from his friends and fans who remember the overcrowded airports in Prague and Bratislava upon his return from the Sapporo Games, or the ice of the winter stadium in Bratislava covered with flowers when he ended his amateur career after becoming World Champion in 1973.  
Today’s generation appreciates new sporting heroes, who will also achieve their entry into the world of the unforgettable, and who will metaphorically stand on the Olympic pedestal of the immortals, as does Ondrej Nepela. Until then, however, let us not forget the personalities who make up the history of the Olympic movement in Slovakia, rather let us commemorate and dignify them.  
 
The first Slovak sportsperson in history to become an Olympic Champion, a World Champion and a European Champion in an Olympic discipline.
He was born in Bratislava on 22nd January 1951. He was taken onto the ice by his mother a few weeks after the end of the 1958 European Championships in Bratislava. His role model was Karol Divín, who had become the European Champion for the first time, at the winter stadium in Bratislava. Nobody paid any attention to the boy on the ice, so his mum asked the coach, Hilda Múdra, if she could attend to her son. The cooperation of the coach with the new sportsman, which developed into a parental relationship, lasted fifteen years. Nepela was very different from his peers.                                                                                                                                                
From his first steps he showed his resilience, his obedience, his discipline at training, and even his stubbornness on the way to success. Although he was a top athlete, he received no allowances as a student at the Secondary School of General Education on Metodova Street nor did he as a student at the Faculty of Law of Comenius University. In addition to figure skating he only enjoyed one other sport – horse riding.  
Ondrej Nepela’s first international competition was the IX Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck in 1964, where his only intention was to introduce himself to the world. He was 145 cm tall and only weighed 39 kg, hence the referees looked in vain for the traces of his compulsory figures on the Olympic ice. He finished in 22nd position.  
By the next year he had already become the Czechoslovak Champion for the first time, following Divín; during his career he was an eight-time champion of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The bronze medal he achieved at the 1966 European Championships in Bratislava opened the way for him to rank among the elite figure skaters. He won his first European Championships in 1969, and managed to defend the title in the years 1970, 71, 72 and73. He became a World Champion, for the first time, at Lyon in 1971.  
His second Winter Olympic Games did not go so well, he finished eighth after failing in the free programme. He won an Olympic gold medal at the XI Winter Olympic Games in Sapporo in 1972, and after the Olympics he defended his world title at Calgary.  
Nepela was among those people who knew the art of leaving. He decided to finish his amateur career at the top after fifteen years, and to try life as part of a professional ice revue. His decision was also supported by a change in the method of evaluation in competitions, especially of the compulsory figures, in which he dominated. However, the view of the contemporary representatives of the socialist national party and sporting authorities in Czechoslovakia was somewhat different; they expected to see Nepela on the ice a year later at the World Championships, held in his home town of Bratislava. Only after long arguments and the promise that he would have permission to leave, legally, to join the revue after the championships did he agree to participate. He performed one of the best free programmes in his career and became the World Champion for the third time.  
Ondrej Nepela spent thirteen years performing in Holiday on Ice. From the summer of 1986 he worked as a coach in Mannheim, Germany. A developing illness did not allow Nepela to enjoy watching Claudia Leistner, who he coached, win the European Championship in Birmingham in January 1989.  
He died on 2nd February 1989 in Mannheim, Germany, and is buried in the family grave at the cemetery in Slávičie údolie in Bratislava.