I was going to the Olympics – then they found my X-rated OnlyFans page

A message pops up when you head to the website address at the bottom of Kurts Adams Rozentals’ Instagram profile.

‘Dear mum and dad, please don’t click on this link. And to everyone else, hope you enjoy.’

If you click, your next destination will be Rozental’s page on OnlyFans – and it’s this that the British canoeist and Olympic hopeful says has landed him in hot water.

The 22-year-old was suspended in April by Paddle UK, the sport’s governing body, and placed under investigation. Paddle UK refused to specify the reasons when approached by Mail Sport but Rozentals suspects it is due to the ‘spicy’ content he shares on the controversial website often used by sex workers to post pornography.

Rozentals, a world Under 23 silver medallist in canoe slalom, says he has earned more than £100,000 in six months since launching his page last January.

His subscribers pay about £9 a month to see 40 videos and more than 100 images of Rozentals in the buff. In one of his most recent posts, he stands naked in a hot tub with only a cupped hand to cover his modesty. Another shows him posing nude behind a well-placed tree.

It’s in his private messages with subscribers, though, where he makes the real money.

‘Is that where they see the lot,’ asks Mail Sport.

‘The lot indeed,’ he replies.

Rozentals has done his fair share of interviews since his ban was revealed last week. He speaks to Mail Sport over Zoom the day after he spent the morning in the Good Morning Britain studio. But amid all the attention, Rozentals feels that, until now, he’s not been able to put the reasons for going full frontal into proper context.

He believes the £16,000 grant given to those on Paddle UK’s World Class Programme, the Lottery-funded UK Sport initiative that puts athletes on track for the Olympics, is nowhere near enough to cover the costs of a gold-medal dream.

For the same reason, Team GB divers including Jack Laugher and Noah Williams shared (far tamer) content on OnlyFans ahead of the Paris Games.

However, Rozentals says the lack of funding does not get close to the heart of his decision. For that, he insists, you need to understand where he came from and how he got here.

‘I grew up with no money,’ Rozentals tells Mail Sport. ‘A lot of the headlines made it sound like OnlyFans was the first thing I went to and it just wasn’t the case.’

Rozentals grew up in Latvia but moved to the UK with his mum Liva and younger brother Klass in 2010 after the financial crisis. A year before they did, his father Janis, who Rozentals describes as a ‘broke artist’, cheated on his mother and left.

They spoke earlier this week for the first time in five years. It was left to single mum Liva to do everything she could to help her sons pursue their sporting ambitions.

Rozentals is talking to Mail Sport from Spain, where is he is cheering on Klass, who also competes in canoe slalom and switched last year from GB to Latvia. Klass, who is 19, also posts on OnlyFans.

‘We had no money for a roof over our heads, no food on the table, so we moved to the UK for a better life,’ Rozentals adds. ‘My mum started by picking strawberries. After a couple of years, we still didn’t have much money.

‘She did everything to allow us to chase the dream of being a professional athlete. Sleeping in cars, maxing out every single credit card. Declaring bankruptcy. She put all her aspirations aside, relationships, friends, free time. It was tough.

‘She got into a lot of debt, the bailiffs started coming. We did everything to avoid them. I knew they came at 3.30pm so I made sure we left at 3.20pm so we weren’t home. I always told my brother not to open the door. They managed to get in once but there was nothing to take. We never had a TV! We had nothing.’

Rozentals is one of GB’s most promising prospects in canoe slalom, a sport he first learned at Stafford and Stone Canoe Club near their first UK home in Great Haywood in Staffordshire.

He started competing internationally in 2019 before moving on to the World Class Programme in 2022. He won the C1 silver at the World Under 23s Championships in 2023 and bronze at the European equivalent last year.

‘When I got that first international medal, that was a big “we did it” moment,’ he says. ‘That was more than a medal. That was our whole f*****g life put into that piece of metal. It was about us as a family, proving that we were able to come from nowhere to excel in something.

‘Ever since we moved to the UK, my mum never wanted to feed the stereotype of immigrants. It was always about proving to ourselves that we came from a rough place but look what we achieved. She always used to say “we do what we can’t”. I shouldn’t be where I am, but we did it.’

When Liva found out Rozentals and his brother had turned to OnlyFans, he says she cried for weeks. ‘Her whole identity had been raising sons that even with their s***ty circumstances were able to achieve great things,’ he adds.

‘When I started OnlyFans, she saw it as erasing the whole story. That was hard for her. She didn’t want to go to training or competitions as she didn’t want to be looked down on as the mum whose sons do OnlyFans.

‘People still ask me if I regret it. The first few weeks after I started, I kept thinking “I can’t believe you’ve done this”. Once you put it out there, it’s there forever. I’ve gone into more than 30 schools around the UK to get kids from underprivileged backgrounds into sport… and then with this it almost erased all the good I have done.

‘But I just put those thoughts away because I knew it was an option to provide a better life for me and my mum.’

He wants to make clear it was not his first port of call. He tried freelance video editing. He put motivational videos together for social media. During the pandemic, he worked in an Amazon warehouse. That was a turning point.

‘I was thinking back to all the things I’d done, going into schools to tell kids they can achieve anything regardless of their circumstances and then I am in the Amazon warehouse stacking shelves. I thought this cannot be it. After that, I wasn’t going to stop at anything to achieve my goals.’

And so, in December, he made the decision. He was still struggling to make ends meet and falling out of love with canoeing. ‘I wanted to quit. I was living so f****** broke, my mum’s life still wasn’t any better. It was just such a grind. £16,000 is f****** nothing.

‘I hoped when I got my medal there would be sponsorships. This is why you don’t see people from underprivileged backgrounds go into it or single-parent families. You need your family to pay for this for a long time. I was at such a point of despair.’

Klass had started on OnlyFans a few months before and Rozentals saw the money his brother was making. He’d seen the GB divers make money from it too. So, on January 10, he launched his own.

OnlyFans, founded in 2016 by English businessman Tim Stokely, is one of the fastest-growing companies in the world, and has been valued at a staggering £5.9billion in recent weeks ahead of a potential sale, which is roughly similar to the market value of the New York Times. Or about three and a half Manchester Uniteds.

There are around 3.5million active creators and last year, OnlyFans brought in £4.64bn in revenue, 80 per cent of which is kept by the creators. It’s not all X-rated content, either. Former England rugby captain Chris Robshaw shares fitness tips on his account.

There is a key difference, however, between Rozentals and the divers, or Robshaw, and it is one that muddies the waters of being an athlete, role model and a young man just doing what he can to make a living far more.

Laugher, Williams and co weren’t fully nude. ‘It’s nothing that you couldn’t show your grandma,’ was how Laugher’s father put it last year.

Rozentals is fully nude, not on his main page but in his private messages. Every week his subscribers can pay extra to watch him pleasuring himself.

He has now been removed from the World Class Programme. He’s been told he cannot train at Paddle UK facilities, or have contact with any staff, coaches or his team-mates. He was removed from an athlete WhatsApp group before a message was put on saying to report to a member of staff immediately if Rozentals contacted any of them.

‘Treating me like a f*****g criminal,’ he says. ‘I am mentally a tough person but I know a lot of people who would have f*****g crumbled if they were in my situation.’

Paddle UK insist Rozentals’ suspension is ‘a neutral act designed to protect all parties and is not a disciplinary action’.

‘It was taken to ensure the integrity of the investigation and to safeguard other athletes, staff, and volunteers due to the nature of the allegation,’ they told Mail Sport in a statement.

‘The investigation has been referred to the independent investigation service Sport Integrity. The interim action places a restriction on the athlete being able to engage with the World Class Programme (which includes communicating with athletes, coaches and staff who are part of the programme), and a restriction on the athlete being able to attend Paddle UK High Performance Centres, any Paddle UK facilities and sites, and any Paddle UK affiliated clubs.

‘The correspondence sent to the athlete at the time confirmed these details as well as outlining the precise nature of the concerns raised and information on where to access a range of support services.

‘Paddle UK is committed to ensuring a safe and open environment for all, and interim action under the Athlete Disciplinary Policy is only taken where necessary and proportionate.’

Rozentals felt uneasy when he saw the money start to roll in.

‘First I thought how the hell is that much in my bank account,’ he says. ‘That was also mixed in with emotions of “damn, look at this world”. These are the most f***ed up times but also allow an individual like me, who has come from nothing, to put money like this into a sporting journey.’

He bought himself a new Skoda. ‘I bet you thought it was going to be a Lamborghini or something,’ he says. ‘Right now, it’s making sure my mum can work less. I want her to enjoy life, to make friends. I told her I want her to do the things she couldn’t for the last 15 years.’

So, what now? Rozentals says he loves the entrepreneurial side of OnlyFans. He sees a parallel between building a business and achieving sporting goals: setting targets, beating your competition. When he started on OnlyFans, his aim was to ‘do it better than the divers’.

His issue now, however, is if he is to keep making money, he must continue to push the boundaries of what parts of himself he is willing to sell.

‘Once they see you (pleasure yourself) once,’ he says, ‘What are they going to pay for next?’

Yet he still has his Olympic dreams. ‘The sporting box remains unticked,’ he says, though admits he struggles to see a world where his and Paddle UK’s views align.

‘I know there is a way I can do both. I love training and competing as well as working on the business. If only Paddle UK had been more open-minded, more supportive and less woke then I would have been able to do both.’

Rozentals claims he has had an influx of companies offering him sponsorships. He knows there are many, though, who feel a potential Olympian, following in the footsteps of Sir Steve Redgrave and Daley Thompson, should not be pleasuring themselves for money.

‘That’s the strongest argument that I’ve heard in push back against it,’ he says. ‘You are a role model, kids look up to you.

‘I guess the simple answer would be: if you want athletes to just represent the country and not have an opinion then the funding should be better. I’m not asking for a big salary, I am asking for a liveable salary in 2025.’

UK Sport insisted that it’s programme was ‘designed as a contribution towards an athlete’s living and basic sporting costs’, adding: ‘In March, we announced an increase in the value of Athlete Performance Award at all levels. They form just one element of the comprehensive support package on offer for funded athletes in Olympic and Paralympic sport.’

For Rozentals, as for others, it’s not enough. So, for now at least, he has no plans to stop selling himself.

‘This is not long term. This is not the start of a porn star. This is just an athlete who is trying to make extra money and provide a better life for his family. If you walked a mile in my shoes, you’d understand why I did what I did.’