Wealth & Money Quote by Sergei Bubka

The most revealing part of Bubka's line isn’t the gear list; it’s the invoice. Pole vault is one of those sports that looks sleek on TV and feels brutally unglamorous in the ledger. By itemizing “landing areas, posts” and then landing the point with “costs a lot of money,” he drags the audience from the myth of pure talent into the material reality of competing at an elite level. This is an athlete refusing the romantic story that champions simply “want it more.”

The subtext is both personal and political. Bubka came up in the late Soviet era, when the state’s sports machine was supposed to absorb these burdens. Saying “I have bought” signals a shift: the vaulter as self-funded operator, not just a national asset. It also reads like a quiet argument for why certain countries, clubs, and families keep producing Olympians: not because they’re blessed, but because they can afford infrastructure. The sentence “We pay for coaches” widens the frame from individual grit to collective cost, hinting at a team, a federation, or a training group held together by money as much as motivation.

It works because it’s plainspoken and slightly aggrieved, the tone of someone tired of being treated like an abstract symbol of excellence. Bubka is naming the hidden barrier: before you clear the bar, you have to clear the price of entry.