One of the new sports in The World Games 2025 is Cheerleading. Originating in the USA, Cheerleading has long been associated with American Football and Basketball, where Cheerleaders chant slogans along with performing synchronised gymnastic routines as a form of encouragement for their team. In recent years Cheerleading has blossomed rapidly across the whole world as a sport, demanding very high levels of fitness, gymnastic skill and choreography for success; the International Cheer Union (ICU), one of the IWGA's newest members, now claims 116 member nations with an estimated 7.5 million participants worldwide.
One of Cheerleading’s most successful sports stars is Anastasiia Maloshenko from Ukraine. Despite living in a country badly hit by war, she has won the European Championships in ‘Pom Double’ in both last and this year with her competition partner. This year’s win qualifies the pair for The World Games 2025 in Chengdu. Here you can learn about her life in Cheerleading and her hopes for the future.
Anastasiia, congratulations on qualifying for The World Games 2025! Please tell us a little about how you started in Cheerleading, and progressed to becoming Vice-World Champion (2023) and twice European Champion (2023 and 2024).
I started seriously in sport only at the age of 12. Everyone told me, and I also understood, that starting a sports career in this discipline at that age was quite late. But I didn’t think about that because I had found my true calling and passion.
"Just 2,5 years in the sport, in 2017, I became the captain of the junior national team, and in 2018, with this team, we became silver medalists at the European Championship among junior jazz teams.
After my first European Championships, I fell even more in love with cheerleading. I saw how popular it was across Europe and wanted the same for Ukraine—to have more cheerleaders and to win even more medals."
I really wanted to return for world championship medals, but I had little faith in it. In 2022, the war started in Ukraine. Personally, I doubted that I would fully return to professional sport; I thought I might focus on developing as a coach (before the war, I had already started coaching and creating choreography).
"After two months, I realised that only my training brought me the greatest satisfaction and the energy to live. So I slowly began to regain my physical shape.
Then competitions resumed, and at the first national competitions held during the war in Ukraine, I had the opportunity to join the national team and try out for a duo that would compete at the 2023 World Championship. It was a long-forgotten dream, but it came true.
A girl named Yelyzaveta from the Dnipropetrovsk region, which is quite close to the front line, was selected to join me in the double, making her journey to the World Championship very challenging. We trained in my home town, which was slightly safer than her city. This preparation was extremely difficult, but we had a dream and we pursued it. That’s how we won the silver medal at the World Championship among 27 duos. It was hard to believe that during such a difficult time, we brought a medal to Ukraine, one that had been missing for a long time."
After that, we started to believe in ourselves, realising that we were capable of more than we had thought. We began working very hard because we were so inspired by the championship, and that’s how we became European Champions in 2023.
Your discipline, Pom doubles, involves many acrobatic moves at high speed. What has been your physical training programme, in a typical week? Does it change as you approach the dates for competitions?
"I had training sessions six times a week. Three times a week, we did cardio, crossfit, or strength training, and three times a week, we worked on acrobatic elements, jumps, and turns. I had a massage once or twice a week, and of course, muscle recovery after each training session.
Closer to the competitions, when my partner came to my city and we trained together, the programme changed. We spent more time working on the performance with music, and a lot of time went into perfecting the routine and synchronizing turns, jumps, and other elements. Overall, closer to the competitions, we could slightly reduce the load a week or two in advance to perform well in the competitions."
In Pom doubles you are competing with a partner, performing a highly choreographed routine. Do you train and compete with the same partner all the time? And the content of the routine – how is it planned and by whom, and how do you train to perfect the routine?
"Unfortunately, due to the difficult situation in the country, Yelyzaveta (my partner) and I cannot always be together because we live in different cities in Ukraine.
We set specific tasks for ourselves that we can improve on independently in our own gyms, and then when the coaches and the duo come together in one city, we work on the programme together, perfect it, and practice synchronisation extensively."
Who do you see as your strongest rivals at TWG 2025?
"We still don’t know which countries wil be qualified for TWG, but we always consider each team as a very strong opponent."
Looking ahead to The World Games 2025 in Chengdu, where Cheerleading is in the programme for the first time: what are your expectations for the event, both in competition and when you can relax?
"I really want everyone to see how cool, complicated, diverse and interesting cheerleading is. Cheerleading is about performance, friendship and incredible energy - I hope we will pass it on to every viewer and judge."
The International World Games Association (IWGA) is a non-profit-making international sports organisation recognised and supported by the International Olympic Committee. The IWGA comprises 40 International Member Sports Federations. It administers and promotes The World Games (TWG), a multi-sport event held every four years that features around 35 sports on its programme. The next edition of TWG will be in Chengdu (CHN) from 7-17 August 2025. 5,000 participants from more than 100 countries are expected to take part in this 12th edition. The latest Games were hosted by Birmingham, Alabama (USA).
For more information, please contact the IWGA Media and Communication team: [email protected], Tel: +41 21 311 12 97, or visit our website.
