I have bought pole vault equipment, the landing areas, posts, which costs a lot of money. We pay for coaches.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There's so much more important parts other than pole vaulting.
The strategy of my coach and me was that we looked at pictures of all the best pole vaulters from around the world, and we took the best parts from them, and we created a person that had never existed. We then started to work toward being such a person.
The first prize for any production is, if you can find a location that means you don't have to build sets, that will serve, and is not excessively expensive to hire, then it can save you a lot of money.
I need money to build parks. I will build more parks. That's all I'm interested in.
I worked at this place called Water World; it was a waterslide park. My brother and my dad framed my first paycheck from this place - which was for $0.00 dollars - because I didn't even make enough to cover the cost of my uniform!
If it's enough money, I'll play the North Pole.
The pole vault is a very complicated event, there are many things involved.
We started with that, basically to help kids, and then we created a pole vault school, which is part of the club and exists to this day. The club and school exist.
Throughout my career, I've been sponsored by several different equipment companies - Lynx, Titleist, Callaway.
I donate money to the existing foundation that funds the US Ski Team kids.