Since the Olympics, Nikita Nagorny has been very much in demand. He got GQ Athlete of the Year award, had multiple TV and event appearances, and launched a new Youtube show. He also signed with an agent. Despite all this, he managed to continue competing in the Bundesliga and won silver at the Artur Gander Memorial and gold at the Swiss Cup (together with Angelina Melnikova). He talked to GQ Russia about the changes in his life happening in the past few months.
Q: How much did your life change in the past months?
A: I like what’s happening now, I’ve been waiting for it for a long time. Before the Olympics, all my time was dedicated to the sport. Now the Games are over and I’m free. There’s less training, I can relax and do everything I’m interested in.
Q: So, we won’t see you at the next Olympics?
A: This is a difficult question. I want to be needed by the team but it’s important to be honest: if I’ll see I won’t be able to achieve the required result, I won’t participate. But if I’ll feel ready to fight for the highest podium placements, then, of course, I’ll continue. It would be wrong to just say, “Guys, I’m off to the show business or just to domy own thing.” When an athlete goes through training, they are in fact under the country’s wing. We are given everything we need to train, participate in camps, and compete. The sport gave me everything I have now. And the country supports the sport.
Q: Is the status of an Olympic champion a help or a hindrance in your [competitive] career?
A: Our team earned the trust of the fans back in 2019 at the World Championships in Stuttgart. And when we went to the Olympics, we felt the pressure of expectations – everyone wanted to see a victory from us. You go online and see the news, “Our team is competing tomorrow and will fight for the gold”. And, whether you want it or not, you get stressed but, at the same time, you feel a rush of energy and adrenaline, your desire to fight increases. Not only Russia cheered for us – all the CIS countries and, I think, even all of Europe, since the competition was among us, the Japanese, and the Chinese. And we represented a whole continent.
Q: How did your life change now?
A: By a lot. I moved all my non-gymnastics work to the second half of the year – my business and public appearances. I have my own gym. Add to that social networks and events. My current schedule is tough. My wife used to ask when the sport will be over so that we would see each other a bit but she says now that not only it didn’t get change [for the better] but got even worse. We used to have weekends and evenings at least, but now I leave home at 7 am and get back by 1 am. When there was the meeting [of the President] with the Olympians at the Kremlin, we spent eight days quarantined. Many barely handled that period but for me it was a fairytale, just paradise, the best possible vacation. Yes, I was constantly online but still.
Q: Last year’s lockdown also ended up very productive for you judging by your social media.
A: I’m an active use of all the social networks. They play a big role in my life, of course – social networks were how most people learned about me. It all started when some athletes decided to show that you can also train while cooped up inside during the pandemic. Many truly needed to use up their energy somehow. That’s how I am as well, I can’t stay still for a long time, I start exploding and then come up with something. So, my wife and I trained and filmed videos, we filled up our schedule to the brink. Remembering that lockdown, I can say that the whole situation was bleak, I won’t wish it to repeat, but we did everything to make those months positive. We are now filming a show* for the Youtube channel, we plan to film five to ten episodes in the first season.
Q: Aren’t you afraid that people will see you as a celebrity rather than an athlete?
A: I’m not. People who know me know that I’m an active person. If there’s an interesting idea, I will gladly join and it doesn’t matter if it’s connected to sports or some other field. Although, I want to say something here. The thing is that there’s already a stereotype that a successful athlete is a future politician. I don’t want to make predictions but I don’t think it’s my case. I have other priorities now. If there are offers related to opportunities to make artistic gymnastics or sports in general more popular, I gladly take it on. There are events where athletes are rarely invited. There’s also a stereotype that we’re shy and not very interesting people, that we only have training on our minds. I would like to dispel this myth. I have many athlete friends who are also interested in everything, just like me.
Q: Why did this stereotype appear?
A: I guess it’s a leftover from the Soviet times when athletes dedicated their whole life to the sport. The reason was fierce competition. There was a long reserve bench in the USSR and the national championships were basically like the World Championships. In such a situation, you couldn’t switch attention to something else. Times have changed now, there’s room for independence. There are electronic devices, too. I was one of the people who were told, “You have to choose – your blog or the sport, or your business or the sport.” Overall, this approach makes sense to me, if you invested your whole like in a child and his athletic success. This is an investment and an expectation of results. And there are still memories about the level of competition [like in the USSR]. I guess, you could also say it about me that without the distractions, there could have been 10 gold medals.
Q: So, there’s also a generational conflict in the sport?
A: Not quite. There’s military discipline in the sport, you can’t say that you’re off to deal with your own stuff. When I was told, “It’s either the sport or Youtube”, I closed the channel for three months, until I found a team and delegate the production to them. Before, I did everything on my own – filming, cutting, editing. But at the time my priorities were not in question. If I was told no, it mean no. And it’s not about a generational conflict.
Q: How did your wardrobe change because of the change in your schedule?
A: Very noticeably. Now, when I leave home, I have a suit hanging and two pairs of shoes in my car, and there’s room for athletic wear. I can change three-four times a day. Dasha makes fun of me, says it feels like I’m older than 24, my clothes “matured”. I used to have only one rack with formal clothes, but now, when we moved to a house, the wardrobe is twice the size. It’s divided into two parts – formal and athletic. Now, the first part is growing, while athletic clothes used to dominate – something extremely unusual needed to happen for me to wear even a pair of jeans.
*Nagorny’s new Youtube show “Let’s move to the mats” is out on his channel. In the show, Russian celebrities try gymnastics under Nagorny’s guidance while he interviews them. The show’s name is a pun meant to emphasize that it combines gymnastics and informal conversations because in Russian the word “mat” means both a gymnastics mat and profanity.
I admire that he isn’t only depending on sports. He is growing his business and earning money elsewhere. At a young age, he knows what he wants and is aiming for it.