He first competed at age nine. In 1992, he fled war-torn Georgia with his family, moving first to Israel and then to Canada. He caught his future coaches' attention one day when he walked into a Montreal gym club and started spinning on the high bar. He won a gold medal at the 1995 Canada Games, his first important meet. While he's a strong performer all-around, it's on the high bar where Jeltkov best demonstrates his athletic prowess and his gymnastic talent.
High bar is the most spectacular event in men's gymnastics.
Hardy Fink, head coach of the Canadian men's team, says Jeltkov is unstoppable on the high bars with his excellent sense of space and ability to improvise mid-routine. At the Commonwealth Games in 1998, Jeltkov won a gold medal for his horizontal bar routine, a bronze medal in the team event and placed fifth in the individual all-around. In 1999, he won a gold medal on the horizontal bar, a silver medal in the individual all-around and a team bronze medal at the Pan Am Games, as well as a silver medal on high bar at the 1999 World Championships. This year he won two gold medals for his horizontal bar routines at two World Cup events and is currently ranked number one in the world on the horizontal bar, along with Ukraine's Alexander Beresch, Carol-Angela Orchard, a coach with the Canadian gymnastics team, believes Jeltkov has medal potential for the horizontal bar, but cautions that it's a difficult event and the field is incredibly deep. His odds of winning a medal have improved now that Spain's Jesus Carballo, the current world horizontal bar champion, has withdrawn from the Olympics because of an knee injury.