One meets a lot of curious and interesting people in one’s life. People who leave their mark in one’s mind forever. People about whom you somehow know that they are special, different. People who live, think and contemplate in a different way that has nothing to do with the rest of what you have ever seen.
And everyone knows and feels that these people are the ones to write history, it is these people that succeed in their field, with their slightly mad glance and the aspiration specific to them.
Nicky Little is a champion in ramp skating, champion in freestyle skiing in the discipline big air, slope style, half-pipe. He became third at X games in China.
Currently he is shooting with a drone for an extreme film crew. Once a skater who was skating all day long on the ramp in the town, Nicky became a name known worldwide …
Ogy Natchev for Success Stories Mag: How has it happened that, once a skater who was skating all day long on the ramp in the town, you became a name known all over the world?
Nikolay Naydenov – Nicky Little: There was a cool environment and people who had been dealing with skates before you.
They set the proper direction to the young. I was 12 at that time. They bought skates for my sister and I gradually stole them.
The rest is craziness, because every day I was on the ramp skating and crashing.
Falling, standing up, falling, standing up… From morning till night.
Each year one more bigger trick, then falling again and standing up again. We used to skate also in the winter. In January we had 20 days of skating at 5 degrees temperature, after cleaning the snow, we were skating again.
This is how you progress. With a lot of skating and perseverance … With hard work and desire. This is how it happens. It works out well when you want it to.
The first success came a little later. I started to do more sophisticated tricks in 2003 – 2004, as it was then that I learned the 10 (a 1080-degrees rotation – 3×360, these are three full rotations). About 5 people in the world can do a McTwist 10.
The knee, which I injured in 2005 in Germany, was getting worse and worse. I was skating one day and then it started aching. The doctors told me that I should never skate again.
In the summer I went on Gökçeada, Turkey, and there I became a surf teacher.
I gave lessons all the summer and after coming back, I was completely alright.
And today I still go there in the summers. Windsurfing, salt water, wading in the water, swimming has become my remedy.
How did you manage to go skiing after skating and also to become number 1 there?
After I became an European champion in 2008, I stopped skating in the winter. While skiing, I climbed a half-pipe in Pamporovo. For me skiing on a pipe in the winter is the same thing as skating on a ramp in the summer.
I started skating in the summer so as to train for skiing and vice versa respectively. I raised my skating level and when I went to X games in China in 2013, I was fourth, and the next year – third.
You are flying with drons to shoot commercial projects..
By skating, I was living well, earning was not bad, I was going around the world, but these races finish, you still have to think about how to make money.
Recently we filmed a few action films, in which things were constantly alternating. Drone frame, skating frame, drone, skating. And things suited just great.
The truth is that now I feel the same adrenaline like when skating on a ramp or when skiing.
I skate between the cars with 80 km/h with a camera, for a titanic sum of money, while I am filming a car behind me with one of the richest Indian actors in it, who pulls the hand brake, takes out a gun and shoots … I do not want to tell you how this is shot and how risky it is. But I have fun ….
The truth is that I have fun all the time … This is how things are going well.
© B Stefanov
© B Stefanov
