Even now I want to keep my amateur spirit, to spend my time, to be in the sport with all my heart.

The pole vault is a very complicated event, there are many things involved.

What is nice about this sport is that I am responsible for most everything.

I have spoken with many former athletes, and they tell me the best time they had was in sports. I listen to them and use their experience in my career.

People come from around the world and can understand each other without even speaking the same languages!

Of course, the psychological part, the tactics, is very important.

I began with track and field because this is what I know.

Even now I want to keep my amateur spirit, to spend my time, to be in the sport with all my heart.

My policy was just to give good things for sports in my region.

And, of course, method is very important as is a high-quality specialist (trainer) working with you to keep you going in the right direction for your improvement and to help create results.

I think that, generally, you need to live with your sport 24 hours a day.

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 am alone, some people help me, but, basically, I can do what I want.

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.

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

Sports life is very short.

Today I have 35 people who work in the club and associated businesses.

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.

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.

My main idea was to create a sports facility for the basics. This is why I established the club.