'It's just theatre on a bike' - Meet the folk dancer racing at the Track World Championships

“I’m living a really interesting life,” grins Vlad Loginov. His thick moustache, pointed at both ends, bounces on his upper lip as he speaks. “Life is just going with the flow. But at some moment, if I start thinking about it, it’s like, ‘Wow, life is great.’”

Inside a velodrome packed with career athletes, Loginov stands as an exception. While many of his opponents joined talent pathways as children, working their way up through the age ranks, he didn't find cycling until he was in his mid-twenties. Before that, elite sport was never on Loginov's radar. No, before that, the Ukrainian-born Israeli was a professional folk dancer.

“I was working in an academic ensemble of Ukrainian music and dance… folklore,” he says. “I was working in a theatre, and part-time I was studying in a law academy. So I’m a lawyer, also a dancer, and somehow a cyclist.”

Loginov, now 29 years old, began dancing when he was seven. He performed regularly throughout his teens and early twenties, and trained intensively, too. “All Ukrainian dance is based on squats, jumps, a lot of movements like that,” he says, dropping down to the floor and springing back up in demonstration. “I just transferred it to cycling, and it’s going pretty well.”

This week, Loginov is racing at the UCI Track World Championships, his second appearance at the event in his short cycling career. His introduction to the sport was serendipitous, coming six years ago, when he bought a bike on a whim in a Black Friday sale.

“I moved to Israel [from Ukraine], and I didn’t have any friends,” he says, “so I found cycling. Cycling is therapy for me to adapt to a new country. I was working, I was learning Hebrew, and I was cycling. That was really something special for me, because I could get away from everything, like mental therapy, let’s say.”

In the early days, Loginov would do his dance performances in the morning, and then train on his bike in the afternoons. Quickly, he began to realise, the two worlds weren’t as different as they first appeared.

“I like cycling because it’s similar to theatre,” he says, and gestures to the crowds in the stands. “You have the audience.” He then looks over his shoulder at the track. “This is the stage, and you’re performing. In my first training, I remember I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just theatre, just on a bike. How cool is that?’”

This is perhaps why Loginov found it so easy to adapt to his new sport. In 2021, three years after taking up cycling, he won an elite national road race title, beating riders on WorldTour teams. The victory came not long after he cut back his dance shows, the coronavirus pandemic putting a sharp pin in the performing arts industry.

Today, he says, he still dances “just for fun – I have a ballet show that I perform with sometimes.” Mostly, though, Loginov earns his money as a barista in a café in Tel-Aviv.

“I have training on the track twice a week, so those days I don’t work, because it’s all day track and gym,” he says. “And all the other days, I try to do a workout in the morning, and then my barista shift in the evening.

“It’s pretty hard after the workout. When you’re standing for seven hours on your legs it’s just ouch, ouch, ouch. It’s not the best, but still, it’s better than nothing.”

After finishing 15th in the scratch race on Thursday, Loginov’s attention has now turned to Sunday’s Madison, when he will become one half of Israel’s first pairing to compete at a World Championships. His ambition beyond that is to do the same at the Olympics.

“Madison is my passion, and hopefully we can make it to the Olympics,” he says. A lot can happen in the four-year cycle to Los Angeles, however, as Loginov knows. There will be many more barista shifts, ballet performances, and family duties at home – he and his wife are expecting a second child in March.

“This is what motivates me to give my best, because I know how much I’ve sacrificed,” the 29-year-old says. “I’m really happy we made it [to the World Championships], and let’s see. We’ll try to make it to the Olympics. Hopefully I will still be cycling then.”