Alongside his sister Eva, he became a four-time world champion, was one of the most popular athletes in Czechoslovakia and made his mark in the famous Holiday on Ice revue. Figure skater Pavel Roman, whose life ended in a car accident in 1972, would have turned 80 today.
The Roman siblings were very popular in the first half of the 1960s, from Aš to Košice they were called “Our children”.
They won their first world title in 1962 in Prague, when Pavlov was 19 and Eva 16 years old. The whole figure skating world lay at their feet, as they did not find a conqueror even at the next three championships, in the meantime they also won two European golds.
The natives of Olomouc were introduced to figure skating by their father, who prescribed their training sessions depending on when and where the ice was available.
“He wouldn’t stand it if we were slacking off. So we skated in the winter, played tennis and swam in the summer, even in Prague, where we moved. But because of sports, we hardly had any friends, we didn’t go to the cinema. We didn’t have time for that, ” said Eva.
They originally started as a sports couple, they first tried dancing in 1958. They did both disciplines for a while, but when they placed better in dancing at the European Championships 1959 in Davos, they stayed with them.
At their father’s request, the famous trainer Míla Nováková took them on, who set them up for rides on precise step variations.
After the fourth title of world champions in 1965, the Roman family could officially go to one of the American revues. In order to see their parents, who, with a few exceptions, could not travel to see them, they chose Holiday on Ice, which performed once every two years in Prague. “We’d rather end up at the top. We could just go down the hill,” Eva explained the unusually early departure from the amateur ice.
After six years in the revue, they parted ways. Eva married the English figure skating comedian Jack Graham, with whom she also performed on the ice.
For Pavlov, a lover of fast cars, his hobby became fatal. He died shortly afterwards at the age of 29 in a car accident in Tennessee, USA. He is buried in Olšan Cemetery in Prague. “Our brother and sister relationship was extraordinary. It was hard work, but at the same time beautiful years,” his sister recalled.
The Grahams bought a farm in England and started farming, then traded it for Admiral Nelson’s former residence and turned it into a retirement home. After ten years, they sold it and moved to Texas, where they ran a goose and duck farm. They then bought a camper van and cruised America with it for four years.
At the beginning of the millennium, they improved the farm in Lipnice near Rokycan, after the death of Eva’s mother in 2005, they settled permanently in England. Husband died in 2015.
