Years ago, Stanislav Shaidorov, a former figure skating champion of Kazakhstan, sold his car to help pay for his son Mikhail’s training on the ice. After Mikhail won Olympic gold this month, the older Shaidorov was presented with an Audi Q8 by a businessman who had done the same thing for a different cause.
“This story is personal for me,” said Arsen Tomsky, founder and CEO of the ride-hailing app inDrive, which operates in dozens of countries.
“I did the same twice in my life — once to pay salaries when my first company had no money, and once to send the Yakutia esports team to a national championship when we couldn’t afford the tickets,” Tomsky said on Instagram.
Yakutia is in Russia. Tomsky was born in Russia, moved many employees to Kazakhstan after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and obtained Kazakhstani citizenship in 2023. Forbes Kazakhstan ranked Tomsky as the 11th richest business executive in the country in 2025.
Kazakhstan has been celebrating 21-year-old Mikhail Shaidorov’s achievement at the Winter Olympics in Milan – his country’s first gold medal in figure skating. His father is also getting recognition as a pillar of support earlier in his son’s career, when success was far from assured.
“As the father and first coach, he helped Mikhail take his first steps on the ice rink and was always by his son’s side during the most difficult moments of life,” President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said at a ceremony in Astana for the gold medal winner and his key supporters.
“You went together through the winding path leading to the high peak,” Tokayev said to Stanislav Shaidorov on Wednesday. “Now you are seeing the fruits of your hard work and sweat, being honored and respected.”
Tomsky, the inDrive founder, said he could relate to Stanislav Shaidorov’s decision to give up his car for his son’s dream.
“In moments like that, you don’t think about the car,” the executive said. “You think about the future and the people you believe in.”
