"I am alone, some people help me, but, basically, I can do what I want"
About this Quote
A pole vaulter sprints down the runway surrounded by noise, yet the moment of commitment belongs to one mind and one body. Sergei Bubka captures that paradox of elite sport: the athlete is embedded in a web of coaches, physios, and organizers, but the decisive act happens alone. Help exists, guidance matters, and he was shaped by the rigorous system of Vitaly Petrov and the Soviet sports machine. Still, when the pole bends and the bar looms, nobody else can choose, risk, or execute. That private sovereignty is both burden and freedom.
Bubka built an entire career on that sense of agency. He was renowned not only for extraordinary power and technique but for controlling variables others left to chance. He selected conditions, competitions, and bar raises with clinical precision, often advancing the world record by the smallest legal increment. Critics saw calculation; he practiced authorship. The athlete claims the right to set terms, to design a path rather than submit to one. Autonomy here is not rebellion against help, but mastery of it, converting support into a platform from which independent decisions become possible.
There is also a moral undertone. To say I can do what I want acknowledges accountability. Without teammates to absorb failure or share blame, choices are stark and consequences immediate. Freedom is earned during unglamorous hours of repetition, where technique becomes instinct and instinct becomes trust. Bubka’s line resists the comforting fiction that success is collective enough to dilute responsibility. It asserts that the highest level of performance requires both gratitude and self-rule.
Beyond sport, the sentiment resonates with any craft that culminates in solitary performance: the pilot at takeoff, the surgeon at the first incision, the writer facing a blank page. Others can prepare us, but not replace us. Support is the scaffolding; the leap is ours.
Bubka built an entire career on that sense of agency. He was renowned not only for extraordinary power and technique but for controlling variables others left to chance. He selected conditions, competitions, and bar raises with clinical precision, often advancing the world record by the smallest legal increment. Critics saw calculation; he practiced authorship. The athlete claims the right to set terms, to design a path rather than submit to one. Autonomy here is not rebellion against help, but mastery of it, converting support into a platform from which independent decisions become possible.
There is also a moral undertone. To say I can do what I want acknowledges accountability. Without teammates to absorb failure or share blame, choices are stark and consequences immediate. Freedom is earned during unglamorous hours of repetition, where technique becomes instinct and instinct becomes trust. Bubka’s line resists the comforting fiction that success is collective enough to dilute responsibility. It asserts that the highest level of performance requires both gratitude and self-rule.
Beyond sport, the sentiment resonates with any craft that culminates in solitary performance: the pilot at takeoff, the surgeon at the first incision, the writer facing a blank page. Others can prepare us, but not replace us. Support is the scaffolding; the leap is ours.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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