Canadian figure skating star Otto Jelinek of Oakville, Ontario passed away at the age of 86 on Tuesday according to Dylan Robertson of the Canadian Press. Jelinek teamed up with his sister Maria to win the gold medal in pairs figure skating at the 1962 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague.
The Jelinek siblings had 15 ordinal places in winning gold. Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov of the Soviet Union won the silver medal with 16.5 ordinal places. Margret Gobi and Franz Ningel of West Germany won the bronze medal with 25.5 ordinal places. The Jelineks reached the podium by 28.5 ordinal places. Eventual Canadian Olympic silver medalists Debbie Wilkes and Guy Revell of Toronto, Ontario finished in fourth place with 45 ordinal places. Wilkes and Revell won the silver medal in men’s pairs at the 1964 Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck.
The Jelineks also won three more medals at the World Figure Skating Championships. They won silver in the pairs event in 1960 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and bronze at the 1957 World Figure Skating Championships in Colorado Springs and bronze at the 1958 World Figure Skating Championships in Paris.
After his figure skating career, Otto Jelinek was the Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport in the Conservative government from 1984 to 1988. He was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1962. Jelinek died of Parkinson’s Disease in Mississauga.
