Quote Originally Posted by engie View Post
Marlon is considered a lock to be an Olympian in at least 3 different hurdle distances. He was on teamUSA this summer and set at least one European hurdle record.

He has the 2nd fastest time in US history in the 110m, had the fastest times in the country last year in the 110m, 300m, and 400m(or at least they were at the time of their running). And that's just the ones that I can easily find in a search...

He's a nationally elite track athlete that can easily been seen as a professional in either.
That's a little different then. If you are that elite at it, I understand it completely. I just don't get the draw for the ones that aren't.

I tried to find out how much money you can make as a professional athlete, and it looks like you have to be top 10 in your event to make a good living (sprinters make more than distance, distance make more money than non-jumping field events, not sure where jumping events fall on the spectrum), and you basically have to be a recognized as a star to make more than $200k per year, and then your extreme outliers like Usain Bolt or Michael Johnson can strike it rich. Those are just ballpark gathered from a couple of different sources (where the sources themselves said they were not entirely accurate because most of the money is in private endorsements, not prize money, so it's hard to get completely reliable information).

I guess both of them are ridiculous long shots for most high school athletes, but if you're truly elite in both, it seems like it'd be a lot easier to be one of what, 60, starting cb's than top 10 in any individual track specialty.