Olympian Sharron Davies says canoeist in OnlyFans row faces tough choice between sport and 'very good money'
3 June 2025, 08:07 | Updated: 3 June 2025, 11:27
Olympian Sharron Davies has backed a canoeist who was forced to turn to OnlyFans to fund his sporting ambitions.
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Kurts Adams Rozentals claimed his Olympic dreams have been destroyed because of concerns about the "over spicy" content he posts on OnlyFans.
Sharron Davies told LBC this morning: “It’s a difficult one. All athletes are asked to sign a contract saying they won’t bring their sport or their country into disrepute. People might say an OnlyFans account does exactly that.
“This young man seems to have made an awful lot of money in just six months.
“If that’s the case, well he’s got quite a bit of funding now lined up so maybe he should back away from it.
“Take his money, use it very cleverly and wisely but I guess he’s just going to have to make a choice - what is the most important to him?
“Is his sport most important or the ability to go out there and earn very good money doing something that would break the rules that he’s signed up to.”
She said that if he backs down, Paddle UK should look to readmit him.
“He needs a good conversation with his governing body and I wish him all the best.”
Rozentals took to social media to say he will not be able to compete at Los Angeles 2028 after he was suspended by governing body Paddle UK last month.
The athlete, from Staffordshire, claims this was due to "allegations" surrounding his posts on the adult content site.
Paddle UK has refused to clarify the reasoning behind his suspension, but the Brit took to Instagram on Thursday to accuse the sport's chiefs of taking issue with his online persona.
Rozentals' career had been going from strength to strength after he won the individual C1 silver at the World Under-23 Championships in 2023.
But after creating an OnlyFans account in January to help fund his training programme, things started to fall apart.
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In April, Paddle UK removed Rozentals from their World Class Programme - the UK Sport lottery-funded initiative to help athletes with their Olympic dreams - pending an investigation.
Rozentals has posted 39 videos and over 100 photos on the subscription-based website, accumulating more than 10,000 likes.
Posting a statement to his Instagram account on Wednesday, Rozentals said: "I have been posting videos (on Instagram) that are consciously made to be edgy in order to drive conversions to my 'spicy content page' (on OnlyFans), to fund this ultimate dream of going to the Olympics."
According to Rozentals, a Paddle UK representative told him he wasn't allowed to contact any of the staff or his fellow athletes on the programme while he was suspended.
"I couldn't believe the words I was hearing because this is what I put my life into this is everything I do," he wrote.
"My personality at this point, my identity, is sport and I want to be a professional athlete chasing my Olympic dream."
Rozentals says he turned to making OnlyFans content because the £16,000 grant he received from the Paddle UK's programme was not enough.
"I don't know how much you need but it's certainly not £16,000," he explained.
"When you have to cover rent, travel, food... and most athletes who train full-time are all living in London. They're very fortunate to have parent backing - I wasn't.
"I never had the ability to move to London because of financial struggles so I was always doing the travel from the East Midlands, where I live, to London, back-and-forth, back-and-forth."
