By the time Mirza Nikolajev slides onto the ice at more than 120 kilometres per hour, his thoughts must be perfectly still. There is no room for doubt, hunger or distraction. One wrong movement, he says, and you crash.
“Once, during training, I was very hungry and thought about burek [traditional meat-based Bosnian/Turkish pie] in a curve at 100 kilometres per hour – and I crashed,” he recalls. “That’s how little time it takes. Hundredths of a second.”
Nikolajev, 24, a luger from Sarajevo, is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s few winter Olympians. His career symbolises the quiet struggle of many other professional athletes in a country that still carries the burden of war, economic instability and neglected infrastructure.
There has been disappointment too – he narrowly missed out on qualifying for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, which open on February 6.