My Story is the memoir from retired gymnast and YouTube star, Nile Wilson.

Sometime during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, my fiancee stumbled across Nile Wilson’s YouTube channel. Wilson, a British Olympic medalist, would gather his friends and family and shoot videos of them competing in various gymnastics-based challenges in a variety of environments. It was a bit of fun and comedy for us during some of the darkest days of 2020.

I received an advanced copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

With My Story, Nile takes the reader though his celebrated career as he shares his brutal training regimens, his battles with addiction as well as his struggles with mental health that unfortunately goes hand-in-hand with being an elite level athlete. Nile writes of the dangers that come with measuring your self-worth against your career accomplishments and your level of performance.

Despite experiencing those dark days, Nile comes across as an optimist with an overwhelmingly positive message about how crucial it is to ask for help when you need it so you can avoid the pitfalls of self-pity that comes with self-destructive behavior.

Maybe it is the first time they’re being revealed to the world, but I had no knowledge of Nile’s gambling addiction, his eating disorder or his entrenched battle with British Gymnastics as well as his legal fight with a prominent gymnastics club – something that would ultimately lead to him investing more in his YouTube channel and opening his own series of gymnastics clubs across Britain in an effort to change the culture surrounding the sport.

Overall, the book was more revealing than I expected but that might be more to do with not really knowing much about Nile other than him being a ridiculously talented athlete. It’s a short one – clocking in at just under one hundred and fifty pages – but it was an eye-opening look at the high-stress pressure imposed on amateur athletes and what it takes to not only reach the top, but the struggle to stay there.