Ondrej Nepela was born on January 22, 1951 in Bratislava. However, no one would have thought then that he would become one of the best and most respected athletes ever born in Slovakia.
However, success did not fall from the sky for the legendary figure skater. According to his trainer Hilda Múdra, he was not one of the greatest talents, but he had to work hard for everything. However, this sport returned his efforts several times over.
The sum of his achievements is literally breathtaking. During his rich career, Nepela became 8-time Czechoslovak champion, 5-time European champion, 3-time world champion, and underlined his sporting immortality in 1972 at the Olympics in Sapporo, where he won a gold medal for Czechoslovakia.
Conjecture about his death and orientation
It was a huge shock for the whole of Czechoslovakia when they learned about the death of Ondrej Nepela in 1989. According to official information, the then only 38-year-old figure skater died of lymph node cancer.
Nepela died in the city of Mannheim, which was located in the Federal Republic of Germany. According to former representative Jozef Židek, he chose this position because it gave him the opportunity to admit who he really was.
“He wanted to go there because he knew that he would be able to confess his orientation there. He had the opportunity to fall in love there and realize his love.” said the former figure skater in the documentary series Stories of the famous.
A few years after his death, reports began to appear that Nepel’s death was caused by AIDS. In Czechoslovakia, this was primarily associated with homosexuals, so it was decided that this fact would be kept secret. “We were officially instructed not to say that Nepela died of AIDS,” commentator Karol Polák admitted in the documentary.
