SIBEL OSMAN is four days out from launching her 2026 competitive season – one she says will be unlike any before it.
"It's been emotional," Osman tells FrontDouble.com. "This year is the first year and the first season I do without my beloved father, who I lost last September 6 while I was on stage competing in Hong Kong."
Her father, she says, was her biggest fan and she was his. Working through prep without him, she admits, has coloured the entire lead-up to this season.
The timing carries its own weight. Osman's first show of the year, the BPA English Grand Prix, falls this Sunday, September 6 – the exact one-year anniversary of her father's passing. It is also a show she has chased for years: a chance to finally compete on the stage of promoter Helen 'Panther' O'Reilly, after dates never previously aligned. "That's a beautiful synergy," says Osman. "I'm really excited, albeit emotional."
Osman says she is bringing an entirely new package to the stage this season – bigger, more refined, built directly on feedback from the year before – and describes her prep so far as the smoothest of her career, running on what she calls "cruise control".
That English Grand Prix result matters beyond sentiment, too: it's a British finals qualifier, with the final itself landing just one day after Osman's own event, the SOPRO Night of Champions, which she is organising and promoting for the first time on September 19. Running both in the same window, she admits, could get "interesting".
As the Road to Milan begins, Osman steps into the season carrying grief, ambition and a physique she says is better than it has ever been.
Follow Sibel Osman's Road to Milan series on FrontDouble.com and watch the first episode below:
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