Mikhail Shaidorov believed that if he could survive the struggle long enough, one day everything would finally change. Behind that belief was a family facing severe financial hardship so difficult that Shaidorov’s father once sold his car so his son could continue training. The 21-year-old figure skater believed that his moment of triumph had arrived at the 2026 Olympics, where he won Kazakhstan’s first Olympic gold medal in 32 years. But as he later revealed, winning the first Winter Games gold since Vladimir Smirnov did nothing to quell his struggles.

On May 27, Shaidorov revealed that he had not received a salary from the Kazakhstan federation following his medal at Milano Cortina victory. The Olympic champion admitted that the situation had left him confused and uncertain while preparing for the next season.

“When I spoke negatively about it, apparently they wanted to punish me. Since my victory, I haven’t had a salary. Now I need to prepare for the next season, and I don’t understand how to do that. Training camps are planned, dates are already set for when I’ll be working on my program,” said Shaidorov to Tengri News via FS-Gossips. “We’ve asked several times if they can pay for the program setup, and so on. One person says one thing, another says something else, a third says something different. The situation is unclear to me. And since February 1, they removed my doctor, which is strange.” (translated via Google Translate)

The uncertainty has already begun to affect preparations for the new season. Though he hasn’t announced a return date after skipping the world championships in March, his training camps and choreography dates have been scheduled. However, Shaidorov claims there is still no clear answer regarding funding and support.

According to Kazakhstan media reports released after the Olympics, Shaidorov had been earning around 1.5 million tenge per month under his athlete contract before negotiations for the new Olympic cycle began. Reports also stated that his annual athlete compensation reached around 33.9 million tenge, while the government separately covered coaching, choreography, travel, camps, and Olympic preparation costs.

In addition to his salary, Mikhail Shaidorov also received Kazakhstan’s official Olympic gold reward of $250,000 USD, around 123.7 million tenge. After the Olympics, officials reportedly planned to negotiate a new contract with updated funding and salary terms for the next Olympic cycle. But now, the situation appears very different.

The conflict seems to be related to Shaidorov’s previous criticism of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports. It began when the ministry made public its state expenditure on his Olympic campaign, which included his salary, preparation costs, training expenses, coaching support, and camps. Later, Shaidorov admitted that the ministry had gone too far.

“It was unpleasant that information about my salary was released publicly,” said Shaidorov mere days after winning gold. “I think it’s not very respectful to me as an athlete and a person. I don’t understand why this needed to be highlighted, since I was simply doing my job – training, competing, and striving for results without rest.”

Once the salary information became public, he became disillusioned with the attention that was not being paid to the years of sacrifice that had gone into getting him the medal.

“Now it looks as if the ministry is billing me for the gold medal? It shouldn’t be like that. I don’t want the focus to be on money. Everyone knows figure skating is an expensive sport. I didn’t even count how much was paid. But all the funds I received were used exclusively for preparation. There should be no doubt about that.”

For many fans, the situation has been a sore contrast. The athlete, who brought Kazakhstan its first Winter Olympic gold in thirty-two years, is now openly speaking about the uncertainty about the future of his sport and numerous other problems after the many sacrifices he has made.

The hardships behind Mikhail Shaidorov’s rise

It took years for Mikhail Shaidorov to fight his battles far removed from the spotlight before he became an Olympic champion. Born into the family of the former national skating champion of Kazakhstan, Stanislav Shaidorov, he appeared on the ice for the first time as a six-year-old.

What began as a childhood pastime when visiting a small outdoor rink near a Ramstore shopping center every day slowly became a dream powerful enough to reshape his family’s future.

As his talent grew, so did the sacrifices around him.

Shaidorov quickly rose through Kazakhstan’s skating scene by winning five national titles between 2020 and 2024, but the path forward was never easy. Kazakhstan lacked the elite-level infrastructure needed to develop world-class figure skaters, which forced his family to make difficult choices early in his career.

One key catalyst to this decision came in 2017 after Shaidorov participated in a training camp with 1994 Olympic winner Alexei Urmanov and made his first double Axel before learning triple jumps less than a year later. He then decided to move away from home to train and compete against the very best in the world.

Shaidorov moved to Russia, to Moscow first, then to Sochi, where he was trained by Urmanov at the age of 14. It brought him closer to good facilities and top-notch coaching, but also plunged his family into deep poverty. Years later, the skater confessed that there were times when they just didn’t have enough money to keep the dream alive.

“My dad sold his car in a day or two, and with that money, we went to Sochi so I could train. For four or five years, I almost always trained in Sochi. It was very hard.”

As his career started to take off on an international level, the COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on training and competitions across the globe in the 2020-21 season. This resulted in Shaidorov spending many hours training away from the ice. But before the 2021 World Championships in Stockholm, he sustained a serious back injury, which cost him his preparation and confidence. He placed 32nd in the short program and did not make the free skate qualification. The injury nearly changed everything.

In 2025, Mikhail Shaidorov’s father revealed that because the back injury prevented him from training at full strength, the Kazakhstan Skaters’ Union reportedly stopped his funding and removed him from the national team setup. It might have been the end for many athletes. However, Shaidorov and his entourage were not ready to leave, and Urmanov used to coach him without any salary or support.

Even after becoming one of Kazakhstan’s biggest sporting names, he continued speaking openly about the realities behind elite figure skating.

“Many expenses in figure skating aren’t covered. The state won’t fund them. Sometimes you need to travel urgently to work with specialists not on the national team. If it’s not a competition or official training camp, I pay for accommodation and daily expenses myself.”

Also, constantly traveling for visas, ice time, training camps, and proper facilities made it very exhausting for him because of the limited infrastructure in Kazakhstan.

“I train year-round, with no free time. The money everyone’s talking about lately, we never counted it. My family doesn’t keep track of expenses for my preparation. I’ve been on the ice since I was six.”

That is what made his Olympic victory in 2026 feel bigger than just sport. But apparently, that feat wasn’t enough to rally the Federation’s unconditional support.