Gladiators favourite Nitro is "all in" for Strictly Come Dancing 2025 after suffering injury
The Olympian will be headed to the Strictly dance floor for a second time.
Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, or Nitro, as same may know him, is swapping the Gladiators lycra for the sparkles of Strictly Come Dancing as he heads onto the dance floor this weekend.
Kicking things off with the launch show this Saturday, Harry and the 14 other celebrities taking part will meet their professional partners while judges Shirley Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke give their initial thoughts on the couples.
Fans of Gladiators will know that Harry was absent from a lot of season 2 after sustaining an injury during training.
"Obviously, you know I'm explosive, I'm powerful, sometimes I'm too powerful," he said on the show, continuing: "I end[ed] up hurting myself and I've got a little bit of a dodgy knee, but these things happen in sport when you're pushing yourself as hard as you do."
Now fully healed, Harry is ready to give it his all on the Strictly ballroom.
"I'm all in really. I think I've been able to get through a filming of Gladiators, I know that my body's in good nick I've conditioned it as I should normally," Harry told RadioTimes.com and other press.
"When you're happy, your body's then happy, and it's all good. So I'm quite thankful that, and I'm far more appreciative to come back and be better."
This won't be Harry's first rodeo on the Strictly dance floor, having participated in the Christmas special last year, something he said was "one of the best experiences".
He told RadioTimes.com and other press: "I think Christmas was so so much fun. It was genuinely one of the best experiences. It was great for me because I was coming off a back of an injury and that gave me the confidence because that was the first bit of activity I'd done.
"I did wonder whether I'd be able to be Harry Aikines-Aryeetey the sprinter again [or] Nitro, it was quite a serious injury. So that gave me a bit of confidence. I didn't get to actually learn a dance, I just did street commercial so I haven't got an advantage in that sense. But having been in that environment, I'm excited."
Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC One and iPlayer on Saturday 20th September at 6:40pm.
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Authors
Katelyn Mensah is the Senior Entertainment Writer for Radio Times, covering all major entertainment programmes, reality TV shows and the latest hard-hitting documentaries. She previously worked at The Tab, with a focus on reality TV and showbiz news and has obtained a BA (Hons) in Journalism.
