Gladiators star and Olympic sprinter Harry Aikines-Aryeetey is the first celebrity contestant to be announced for the Strictly Come Dancing 2025 line-up.
Aikines-Aryeetey, known as Nitro to Gladiators fans, appeared on the BBC’s Newsround on Monday to announce he will be joining the dancing show.
“I’m so excited to be part of the Strictly family this series and I’m ready to give it all I’ve got,” he said.
Strictly Come Dancing airs on BBC One and iPlayer from September through to December.
Aikines-Aryeetey is a former Team GB sprinter and was the first athlete to win gold medals at both 100 and 200 metres at the World Youth Championships.
In 2005, aged 17, he was won the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award.
He has competed at two Olympic Games and is a three-time European champion and two-time Commonwealth champion.
In 2023, he was unveiled as Nitro in Gladiators, and took part in last year’s Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special partnered with Nancy Xu.
Aikines-Aryeetey said the Christmas Special “was so nice I just had to do it twice”.
On Monday, he appeared live in the Newsround studio disguised as “world-famous choreographer Nicky Trott”, there to talk about a scientific study into the benefits of dancing every day.
He then revealed his real identity and told viewers how excited he was to be joining the dancing competition.
“I’ll be bringing tons of energy to light up the dance floor,” he said. “Let’s hope I’m as quick picking up the routines as I am on the track.”
The next three celebrity contestants joining the new series of Strictly will be announced on The One Show on Monday evening.
Two new professional dancers are also joining the line-up this year – Alexis Warr, who won US dance series So You Think You Can Dance in 2022, and Australian-born Julian Caillon, who has appeared as a professional dancer on three seasons of Australia’s Dancing With The Stars.
The show, which has been airing since 2004, has faced multiple controversies over the past year relating to the behaviour of some of its professional dancers and celebrity guests.
Professional dancers Giovanni Pernice and Graziano Di Prima left the show last year following allegations about their behaviour towards their dance partners.
The BBC announced new welfare measures for Strictly last July. These include having chaperones in all rehearsal rooms, adding two new welfare producers and providing additional training for the professional dancers, production team and crew.