“When just a few meters remain before the finish line, you have to call on all of your powers to make that final sprint to the end. Despite the previous hours of racing already behind you and the fatigue that weighs you down, you actually speed up, against all understanding, and that is how you win the gold. Sochi’s Olympic bid is in the homestretch now and victory is in sight, with a good sprint to the finish all that is required. It’s a great pleasure and a great responsibility for me to become a Sochi 2014 Ambassador and I’ll do my best to help the Bid cross that line in first place and bring the Olympic Winter Games to Russia for the first time in history.“

Nikolay Kruglov is a two-time biathlon World Champion, Olympic medalist, four-time World Cup round winner, and accredited world-class master of sports.

A 13 year-old Kruglov showed impressive results as early as his first season in 1994 and made it into the top-ten most accomplished skiers of the Nizhniy Novgorod Region not long after he began attending the Olympic school N1 under the guidance of coach Yuri Kuzmin. Two years later, Kruglov's father, two-time biathlon Olympic Champion, officially passed on the family tradition and began training his son. Soon after, Nikolay took the title of Junior Champion of Russia while in his eleventh-grade year of school.

Nikolay had stunning results at Junior World and European Cup events, all the way through to the biathlon major league. The 2002 season was especially successful, with Nikolay taking fourth and second places in World Cup rounds.

At the 2004 World Cup rounds in the USA, Nikolay Kruglov won silver and bronze in pursuit and took his first World Cup gold that same year, also in pursuit, at a competition in Slovenia. This paved the way for his entry to the 2005 World Cup season and gave his fans good reason to nickname him the "master of pursuit".

At the final round of the World Cup 2005, the National Biathlon Team of Russia won gold in the mixed relay, being held for the first time in history in Russia, in Khanty-Mansiysk. A 23-year-old Nikolay Kruglov became the 2005 World Champion and then went on to win silver at the Olympic Winter Games in Torino the following year. Nikolay has recently begun the 2007 season with three straight wins (relay, sprint and pursuit) at the fourth round of the World Cup held in Oberhof, Germany.

Nikolay Kruglov was born in 1981 in Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia.

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