"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"
About this Quote
Bubka isn’t trying to sound poetic here; he’s doing something rarer in sports culture: putting the mundane scaffolding of legacy on the table. The sentence lumbers a little, repeats itself, and that’s the point. It’s the language of someone more comfortable building institutions than building a personal myth. Where a lot of athletic greatness gets packaged as individual destiny, Bubka frames his story as an administrative origin tale: we started with a small, practical aim (help kids), then it hardened into structure (a school), then it fused into permanence (part of the club, exists to this day).
The intent reads like quiet accountability. He’s not selling inspiration so much as offering proof of work: the organization outlived the moment and, crucially, outlived him as an active athlete. That last clipped repetition - "The club and school exist" - functions like a stamp on a document. No flourish, just verification. In a post-Soviet context, that insistence on continuity matters. Ukraine’s sporting ecosystem has had to survive political upheaval, funding collapses, and the chronic brain-drain of talent. Saying it still exists is a small triumph against entropy.
Subtext: records are fragile, systems are not. Bubka’s famous heights made him a symbol; this quote shows him trying to convert symbolic capital into infrastructure. The pole vault school isn’t nostalgia. It’s succession planning.
The intent reads like quiet accountability. He’s not selling inspiration so much as offering proof of work: the organization outlived the moment and, crucially, outlived him as an active athlete. That last clipped repetition - "The club and school exist" - functions like a stamp on a document. No flourish, just verification. In a post-Soviet context, that insistence on continuity matters. Ukraine’s sporting ecosystem has had to survive political upheaval, funding collapses, and the chronic brain-drain of talent. Saying it still exists is a small triumph against entropy.
Subtext: records are fragile, systems are not. Bubka’s famous heights made him a symbol; this quote shows him trying to convert symbolic capital into infrastructure. The pole vault school isn’t nostalgia. It’s succession planning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Coaching |
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