I have bought pole vault equipment, the landing areas, posts, which costs a lot of money. We pay for coaches

I decided to create a sports club during the Soviet times. It was my dream.

The Olympics are always a special competition. It is very difficult to predict what will happen.

Often you need to take some risk, but it must be a realistic risk, you can't take a crazy risk.

I think that focusing on the money, on the business, is not enough.

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.

You need to work very hard, you have to spend a lot of time practicing your sport - six to seven hours daily.