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. ↗
When I tell people I'm going to the Olympics, they're like: 'What do you do, track and field? Pole vault? Are you a volleyball player?' No one ever guesses tae kwon do. ↗
I'm very pleased with being a part of the Bean Pole family. It's a relationship that makes sense to me. I'm very pleased to have my name associated with Bean Pole Jeans. ↗
My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity. ↗
I won it, at least five million times. Men who were stronger, bigger and faster than I was could have done it, but they never picked up a pole, and never made the feeble effort to pick their legs off the ground and get over the bar. ↗
I was very short when I was little, so I probably had - and there may be a residue of it now - that Napoleon complex. Wanting to be as big and as powerful as the big guys. ↗