She walks into any room as if she knows something that others don’t. A flawlessly tailored suit and a gaze that scans her interlocutor faster than they can introduce themselves. Yana Otman is not just “Miss Saint Petersburg” and president of the Spartak basketball club. She is a woman who rewrote the script of her own destiny. And by the way, she is the only one who flatly refused to undress in front of Playboy cameras.
Her journey began with a crown. Winning the 2017 beauty pageant opened the doors to the Future of the Motherland Foundation, where Yana became vice‑president. But instead of posing on red carpets, she took on the organization of the international “Peace Rally — 2018.” The project’s idea was ambitious: to connect countries through respect and history. To that end, Yana arranged a rally among aristocrats from Monte‑Carlo to Saint Petersburg, assembling a column of fifty rare cars worth a total of €16 million — from a 1947 Buick Roadmaster to an Aston Martin DB2 and a Rolls‑Royce Corniche. Behind the wheel one could see Grand Duke Georgy Romanov (driving a Ferrari), Prince Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy (he had a Lamborghini, while his vintage Rolls was entrusted to his court mechanic), Prince Serge of Yugoslavia, President of the Rolls‑Royce Club Azzure Jean‑Henri Tamenne, Lady Yurie Hatanaka, and the heir to a samurai clan, Hideto Tomabechi. With the slogans “We Are Together,” the column raced from Monaco to Saint Petersburg, finishing on May 23 at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) venue. The project was supported by descendants of Bismarck, the Romanovs, and Lafayette, while a gala reception at the Prince Albert II Palace gathered aristocrats from across Europe. The sponsor was Hublot, the information partner was Russia Today, and the vintage car exhibition was even featured at the Cannes Film Festival.
Despite its sweeping scale, Yana did not stop there and went further. In 2018, she accepted an invitation to head the women’s basketball club Spartak — and became the first woman president in the club’s 70‑year history. For her, sports are as much a system as any business process: a balance of tactics, finances, and players’ psychology.
But perhaps the most intimate and heartfelt passion of Yana’s today is health and longevity. Her deep knowledge of medical cybernetics allows her to perceive her own body as a complex self‑regulating system with a vast data array. For her, ageing is a process that can be modelled and slowed down if one understands the cellular algorithms. She is convinced that a long and high‑quality life is not a genetic lottery, but an engineering project in which you yourself are the chief designer.
Yana Otman is a woman who lives by her own rules. She is a diplomat, a strategist, an athlete, and an intellectual all rolled into one. And if you think that beauty and intelligence cannot coexist in one body, you simply haven’t met her. And if you have, remember this: she is always one step ahead, because she calculates everything down to the last millimetre — even your thoughts.
