re: Mondo Breaks his own World Record

The money is coming from sponsors. He is doing the same thing Sergey Bubka did.

At this point, there is no financial incentive for Mondo to compete for Sweden rather than the US. For people who aren’t world or Olympic medalists, unless you are a distance runner, it is probably better financially to be competing for a European country. For most people that are Olympic and world medalists, it’s probably better to be on the US team because of sponsorships. Look at Ashton Eaton. After his gold medal in Rio, the first four national ads featured him.

For the truly elite, it doesn’t matter, but the truly elite consists of 5-10 people at most. Noah Lyles, Sydney McLaughlin, Michael Johnson, Andre De Grasse, people like that. Mondo is getting very close to this category. And of course, Bolt is in his own stratosphere.

Mondo and his family made the decision for Sweden when he was in Tier 3. It’s just that he went into Tier 2 and possibly even Tier 1 faster than anyone expected. I bet after his world silver, his dad was thinking “damn, he could’ve gotten more money competing for the US.” Now he’s thinking he could compete for anyone and it doesn’t even matter from a marketing standpoint.

And as for the US qualifying system, who are the biggest names who actually didn’t qualify? Dan O’Brien in a completely self-inflicted move in 1992 (he chose not to vault at lower heights). David Oliver in 2012 in a much more loaded field and a higher variance sport than pole vaulting. That’s about it. The cream always rises to the top.