VOVA GALCHENKO, JUGGLER

"Sometimes I imagine successfully executing a move. I imagine what it looks tike, what it feels like." And sometimes Vova Galchenko just runs up and down the long, steep driveway of the sprawling Agoura house in the canyons that, for the past year, he's called home. It's all in the four-hours-a-day training routine for the young man many call the world's number-one juggler.

What does it take to be number one? "You need endurance and strength, obviously, but 1 think the key component is ambition," Galchenko explains. "'I think if you have ambition you will acquire strength and endurance. I think as long as you have ambition, you're set. You can figure out ways to acquire the things you need."

Together with his younger sister, Olga, Galchenko is part of one of the top juggling acts in the world, appearing on Oprah, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Today. Rut individually, it is 19-year-old Vova Galchenko who ranks at the top of this sport. His expertise in juggling balls, rings, and clubs has taken him thousands of miles from his home in Russia and from his parents, who remain there today. It was his parents, in fact, who enrolled him in an after-school juggling club in his hometown of Penza when he was just 6.

As the son of a math professor, Galchenko also competed in math competitions. "At the time if you had asked me what I was going to do when I grew up I would say it would have something to do with math," he says. And maybe he would have pursued math, had it not been for the disgruntled manager of the juggling club who dismissed both Galchenko and his sister after a disagreement with their parents. "As he kicked us out he said something along the lines of, ‘You guys aren't ever going to be good anyway.’ So we started practicing really hard to spite the guy."

They broke the world record when Galchenko was 15 and Olga was 12. As word of their success spread around the international juggling community, invitations arrived to participate at juggling events all over the world.

For the past four years they've lived in the United States and continued to compete and go to school. Leaving his home and family behind wasn't easy for Galchenko, but his parents wanted the best for their kids. You might say they sent them from Russia with love.