A British athlete who helps to fund his training through an OnlyFans account believes that his dream of going to the Olympics is at risk after he was banned from competing because of his social media output.
Kurts Adams Rozentals, 22, a canoe slalom racer, believes that an official investigation into his online posts is a punishment for the “spicy” nature of the content.
He said that he earned more than £100,000 since starting an account on the subscription site in January while struggling to make ends meet as an aspiring Olympian.
Rozentals said his content had raised eyebrows among his fellow athletes
@KURTSADAMS/INSTAGRAM
Paddle UK, the sport’s governing body, wrote to Rozentals in April saying that it had received unspecified allegations about his social media content.
As a consequence, he has been suspended from UK Sport’s World Class Programme, the National Lottery-funded initiative that aims to create the next generation of Olympic winners.
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The suspension raises questions about the boundaries that define how elite athletes can subsidise their often meagre official incomes.
At the Paris Games last year, a number of British athletes revealed that they had created accounts on the subscription site to fund their sporting careers.
Jack Laugher, who won a bronze medal in diving at the Paris Olympics, also used OnlyFans to boost his earnings
Rozentals said that his sexualised online content had raised eyebrows among his fellow athletes and officials at his discipline’s governing body.
He said his background as the child of a single mother, who moved to the UK from Latvia in 2010 and struggled with poverty, lies behind his decision to do whatever it takes to succeed.
He is paid an official grant of £16,000 a year, which he said was insufficient to fund his full-time training.
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Unlike some of his fellow athletes who can rely on financial support from family, Rozentals has been unable to move to London. He instead travels from his home in the East Midlands to training sessions at the Lee Valley White Water Centre on the outskirts of the capital.
“Athletes are on the edge, struggling to pay rent,” he said.
Without other financial backing available, Rozentals, who won a C1 silver medal at the World Under-23 Championships in 2023, said that he is “doing everything under the sun, as long as it’s not illegal” to fund his dream of competing at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.
Rozentals says he uses “edgy” pictures on Instagram to market his OnlyFans page
@KURTSADAMS/INSTAGRAM
Paddle UK said that the suspension “is a neutral act designed to protect all parties and is not a disciplinary action”, taken to “ensure the integrity of the investigation and to safeguard other athletes, staff and volunteers due to the nature of the allegation”.
Rozentals has been told not to communicate with fellow athletes and coaches in the programme and cannot attend Paddle UK venues or events.
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The body told Rozentals that he may have broken training agreements. A Paddle UK disciplinary policy lists “offensive use of social media” as an example of gross misconduct.
In recent months, he has used his open Instagram account, which has 70,000 followers, to post “edgier” content.
The clips, in which he is often topless, point people towards his OnlyFans page, which can only be accessed through a subscription.
Rozentals described the images on his OnlyFans feed as slightly more explicit than the ones on Instagram and include him posing in his underwear. He provides “solo nude” images on request to those who message him privately on the site. “That is where you make the most money,” he said.
Rozentals in action at Lee Valley White Water Centre, London
ACTION FOTO SPORT/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
Rozentals said that he has tried other ways to earn money, whether working in an Amazon factory or doing freelance video editing but both entailed workloads that negatively affected his training.
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“OnlyFans was just a way, I call it an efficient way, where I’m able to keep up the work, keep up the training, but also make money at the same time,” he said.
He added: “Do I think this is how the world should be? No, I don’t. Do I think people doing OnlyFans should be getting paid this much? No. But is it the world we’re living in? Yes. If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Rozentals said that sporting officials often encourage less experienced athletes to grow their social media presence in order to attract sponsorship deals.
However, he said that the age of athletes “with a perfectly clean image that sponsors will love” is outdated. “Times have changed. You have to be a little bit edgier and you have to be smart in how you do it.”
Team GB divers Noah Williams and Jack Laugher both ran OnlyFans accounts while competing at the Paris Olympics last year. Laugher’s father Dave said that it was necessary “to try to make extra money to make ends meet, when really he should be getting the funding that he needs”.
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A Paddle UK spokesman said: “Paddle UK can confirm that in line with our athlete disciplinary policy, an athlete on the canoe slalom programme is under interim action, pending the outcome of an investigation.”
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