Iouri Podladtchikov was born in Moscow on the 13th of September 1988. Due to his fathers occupation only 4 years after he was born the family moved to Sweden then to the Netherlands and finally settled in Switzerland in 1996. His parents had met studying mathematics and did not think much of his olympic goals in the early years. Iouri competed for Russia in 2006 before switching to representing Switzerland in 2010 and 2014. After the victory in Sochi in 2014 Iouri signed up at the university of Zurich to study art history and photography. In the following years many injuries made him consider pursuing his studies further. In 2019 he signed up at the International Center of Photography in New York to study in the Creative Practices program. When he returned from New York he finally stopped competing to focus on his books and small exhibitions in Basel, Bern and Berlin.