A canoeist for Britain has learned the hard way that what happens at 30,000 feet doesn’t always stay up there. Rozentals was set to compete for Britain in canoe slalom until a video shot on an airplane was uploaded to Instagram and caused quite the stir. That particular post should maybe have been saved for his OnlyFans page, where it could have remained safely behind a paywall instead of on a public feed.
So who the hell am I talking about here? Glad you asked! Canoeist Roberts Rozentals is a Latvian-born athlete who has been training in the UK. He competed for Team Great Britain in canoe slalom (a whitewater Olympic event) and won a silver medal at the 2023 U23 World Championships. He’s known for his precision paddling and for having an intense training regimen. He was training in the UK’s elite World Class Programme, which is funded by the British Sports Lottery and supports athletes working toward the Olympic Games between 2028–2032. His image was your standard “clean-cut poster boy” until Instagram’s algorithm got a little spicier than it was prepared for.
In March of 2025, Rozentals posted a video to his publicly available Instagram showing him engaged in… the kind of spicy act that people pay to see on OnlyFans. British Canoeing called it “seriously discrediting conduct,” which is rich coming from a group that’s literally called “Paddle UK,” the sneaky kinksters. Anyhow, Rozentals was expelled from training and competing, and all of his funding for the elite UK-based program went poof. He was banned from all official UK teams while the disciplinary review was conducted.
Rozentals has suggested that his ban “might be connected” to his OnlyFans account. The incriminating video’s tone, editing, and framing all resemble content that he’s promoted on the adults-only platform, and upon some self-reflection, he’s admitted, “In hindsight, I probably wouldn’t have posted anything like that.” Athletes in traditional sports have this super fun tension to deal with, where they’re facing pressure from their industry to maintain “respectability” for the company brand, but they also need to make more money to live on — and sex-positive subscription models make that possible. While Britain’s sports agencies love diversity, apparently that love ends where the shine of the ring light begins. OnlyFans has become a legitimate income stream for several athletes, both current and former, so you’d think the powers that be would get with the times already.
Rozentals is young and understandably isn’t ready to give up his athletic career just yet, so he’s decided that it’s time for a little reinvention. He’s applied to compete under the Latvian flag through the Latvian Canoe Federation (LKF). The president of LKF, Lelde Laure, has confirmed that both countries are okay with the switch, but they have to wait for a decision from the International Canoe Federation before anything official can be announced. Laure was careful to point out that Latvia doesn’t have the same expensive training infrastructure available that the UK does and that Rozentals’ “previous conditions were far beyond what most Latvians can access.” That ill-thought Instagram video may have cost Rozentals a funded Olympic pipeline, but he’s got a DIY paddle comeback arc waiting for him in Latvia.
There’s a growing overlap between professional athletic influencers and adult content creators. The line between organizational sponsorship and needing to operate off a subscription model gets thinner every month, with several athletes turning to OnlyFans to fund their careers. Basketball players, swimmers, track stars, and even tennis players are all utilizing OnlyFans to underwrite their training and their income. Most of them, however, keep some pretty firm boundaries between what content is publicly available and what gets to stay hidden behind an 18+ paywall.
There’s nothing wrong with making money and building a platform on OnlyFans — everyone has to hustle somewhere. But maybe, if your day gig involves national sponsorships and Olympic trials, you might want to keep all shenanigans that can be rated on a spice scale off Instagram. Rozentals may have lost a paddle, but the current can still be moving in his favor if he leans into it — and if someone shows him how to put his phone into airplane mode.
