Bermudan long jumper Tyrone Smith has been an established international performer for the past decade. Here the three-time Olympian, who earlier this year posted a national record of 8.34m, talks about the challenge of working full time and trying to perform at the top level.
<h3>Making ends meet</h3>
&ldquo;The greatest challenge I&rsquo;ve faced is finding a way to finance my track and field career. I haven&rsquo;t won any Diamond League trophies or major titles and coming from a small nation makes it more difficult to get endorsements and win shoe contracts, so since leaving college I&rsquo;ve worked full time as a car salesman.
&ldquo;Each day I train in the morning and work from about 11am until 8pm and then I go back to training at 8.30pm. I&rsquo;ve done this since the fall of 2007 when I first moved to Houston, Texas in pursuit of making the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
&ldquo;People ask why I do it and a I guess I&rsquo;m a stubborn guy. Since early in my career people told me that I wasn&rsquo;t good enough to get a scholarship at university or that I couldn&rsquo;t make the nationals or later make the Olympic Games. Yet, like every long jumper, I had a ton of long fouls and those fouls kept me motivated. I wanted to show that I belonged at that level.
&ldquo;It is obviously tough to be an athlete and work full time. I can&rsquo;t freely leave when I would like. I&rsquo;m limited to three weeks off a year plus the goodwill of my company to squeeze in all my competitions in the European season. It can make rest and recovery difficult. If I was a full-time athlete, I would still train in the morning but I would then probably complete my strength training and maybe get some lunch and on an afternoon rest and watch a movie. Instead I&rsquo;m working and if I have a client to see I&rsquo;m grabbing food on the run, which is far from ideal.
&ldquo;I also can&rsquo;t tell how many times my phone will ring when I&rsquo;m in the middle of running repeats or doing drills. My instinct is not to answer, but as a salesman it might inhibit me from travelling later in the season because if I don&rsquo;t make that sale, I might not be able to afford to travel.
&ldquo;Sometimes I&rsquo;ve turned up in my training gear for a sale and other times the anti-doping people have come in during the middle of a sale.
&ldquo;I have considered life as a full-time athlete. I&rsquo;ve enjoyed a couple of seasons when I&rsquo;ve had enough money coming in that if I trimmed my living costs and maybe brought in a room-mate I could have gone full time, but the following years the money wasn&rsquo;t quite there to make it work so it was probably the right decision. &nbsp;
&ldquo;Ultimately, I&rsquo;ve reached quite a happy balance with training and work. I just think that my life is not so different to my college days of wake up, go to class, train and go to bed. The only difference now is I go to work rather than go to school. That is how I trick my mind into accepting that what I do is normal. I have never stopped being busy. I have just replaced school with work.&rdquo;
Steve Landells for the IAAF

Bermudan long jumper Tyrone Smith has been an established international performer for the past decade. Here the three-time Olympian, who earlier this year posted a national record of 8.34m, talks about the challenge of working full time and trying to perform at the top level.

My greatest challenge – Tyrone Smith