Russian Instagram Superstar Yulia Kanakina Set To Make Olympic Debut

Russian Instagram superstar Yulia Kanakina will make her Olympic skeleton debut Friday when the competition gets rolling at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre. Kanakina, who is being billed as the "most beautiful" Beijing Olympics competitor by European tabloids, is a former ballet dancer who is now rocketing down an ice track at 80 miles per hour.

The 26-year-old from Krasnoyarsk, Russia says she had dreams of being a ballerina and then one day she ended up on a skeleton track.

“On my first descent in the skeleton, I rode and squealed. It was very scary, I thought, ‘That’s it! Never again, no way!’” she told Russian outlets.

In 2020, Kanakina told Sport24.com that her skeleton career began after being recruited out of her PE class by a coach.

"He was recruiting children to compete in the Youth Olympic Games and asked the teacher which of us was the fastest runner. And I always, compared to others, managed to run fast, despite the fact that I did ballet and gymnastics. That's why they recommended me," she recalled.

"They called me, briefly told me what kind of sport, what event was planned, they said that I could try and that I might succeed. Well, I’m on my own wave: “No, no, thanks, I’m doing ballet and I don’t want to change anything, everything suits me.” I came home, and only about two days later I told my mother and stepfather this story. And mom asks: “Do you want to try?”

And now she's preparing to make her debut for Team Russia as one of the country's most recognizable faces due to her Instagram fame that has attracted the likes of Reebok as one of her sponsors.

Kanakina told Sport24 that flying down the skeleton track feels like being in slow-motion.

"I don’t know how to call that feeling when you go to competitions. Sometimes in training it seems that it’s unrealistically fast, you think that’s it, she broke the world record. You arrive, and time is slow," she said of her life as a skeleton racer. "And you don't understand why. You drive, it seems to you that you have accelerated faster than anyone else on the planet, but in fact the time is such a thing."

Friday morning, the transition from PE class all those years ago to Olympian happens at 9:30 when skelton competitors begin their pursuit for gold.