ANGELA Nikolau, 31, is a rooftopper and lives with her boyfriend, Ivan Beerkus, 30, in Moscow, Russia. “Reaching the top of the spire of Merdeka 118 – the world’s second-highest skyscraper, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – my boyfriend Ivan stepped on to the thin scaffolding we’d carried with us, above the 2,227ft sheer drop. Then he lifted me by the waist over his head while a drone captured the death-defying stunt.
It was December 2022, and after 10 weeks of intensive training, Ivan and were pushing ourselves to the limits of ‘ rooftopping ’, in which extreme climbers scale buildings and cranes without safety harnesses. One wrong move and we risked certain death. Growing up as the daughter of circus performers, I knew I wasn’t going to lead an ordinary life.
I started gymnastics aged seven and had a natural talent, taking part in competitions as I got older. Aged 16, I tried rooftopping, after seeing videos on Instagram – the excitement appealed to me – and I started posting photos of myself doing gymnastics on Moscow’s most perilous rooftops. Before long, I’d gained prominence in what tends to be a male-dominated world.
Not wanting to worry my family, I kept it secret – until my nana saw me on the news! While she was anxious about my safety, she knew there was no stopping me. In 2017, Ivan contacted me and asked me to scale the highest construction site in the world with him – a crane in Tianjin, China . At that time, he was more well-known than me, .
