After winning the 400 meter title in the US Athletics Championships. UU. On Saturday in Eugene, Oregon, Jacory Patterson returned to find his phone full of congratulations.
Among the supporters were some of Patterson’s former co -workers. They had seen him operate under pressure at a fast pace before, in a UPS distribution center in South Carolina.
As Patterson, 25, was shown in Oregon after navigating a return in 44.16 seconds to win his first national individual title, his speed is unique. However, your decision to finance your training through a cemetery shift that packs boxes in the rear of UPS cast trucks is rooted in a reality that is common throughout its sport.
It is difficult to make a living in athletics.
“I can definitely say that it is a bit more difficult to be without knowing it, because you have no money,” Patterson said in an interview on Sunday. “Everything comes out of your pockets. And then, have to balance that with entering meetings, pay the team, pay the peaks and all the things that go to the track? And then have to pay their own invoices too; you know, rent, car invoices, gases, gases, edible, like all nine yards.”
In many of the main professional sports in North America, an individual entity, such as the NBA, the NFL or the MLB, collects income from the rights of the media, the commercialization and other licenses and pays an action to its athletes under the terms of an agreement that has been collectively negotiated with its union. However, Track and Field has no single, Premier League, and his athletes have no union either. The combination makes established professional corridors and applicants in the fastest independent workers in the world, whose income depends on a fragmentary combination that may include endorsements, appearance rates, prizes money and money earned from social networks and subsidies.
As Patterson can attest, not all those sources of income are guaranteed.
In the American championships last week, it was not uncommon to see some of the most paid and most decorated athletes of sport, including the sprinkler Champion Noah Lyles, competing together with the classmates who earn a living. On Sunday, Dylan Beard turned the American team that will compete in the September World Championship in Tokyo in the 110 meter obstacles. However, to go to the meeting, the Non -sponsored Hurdler must ask for a free time of his daily work in the Delicassy of a North Carolina Walmart.
Patterson left the powerful campus of the University of Florida in 2023 with a pair of NCAA relay championships, but their times were not quick enough to win a more important sponsorship contract with a shoe company. Shoe companies provide most of the money for track athletes, although some, but not all, companies use the so -called “reduction clauses” to reduce an athlete’s profits if certain performance brands are not fulfilled.
These contracts are almost never made public. The most lucrative, like the one Adidas has with Lyles, and a five -year agreement and $ 11 million signed by former Olympic champion Andre de Grasse with Puma, are the exception, not the rule, and even then would firmly make them middle class by the NBA, MLB and NFL standards.
The 2024 Olympic trials presented an opportunity for Patterson to take care of themselves with the brands, but did not advance the first round. He did not shook his confidence in his potential, but he did question how much he would cost him from his pocket to realize.
Then, while the world watched the Paris Olympic Games, Patterson moved to his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, and last August began a job in UPS. From 10:45 pm to almost 5 in the morning, Patterson stopped next to a conveyor belt, collecting boxes that contain everything, from sofas to refrigerators and loading them in cast trucks. I could pack up to four trucks in one turn, he said.
Patterson did not find the discouraging work, but that he persuaded himself that while his companions literally slept, he was strengthening. His mother joked Patterson that his night turn was like his second training of the day. That was because, hours before, I had the first.
After sleeping for three hours after his turn with UPS, Patterson would wake up and start training from around 8:30 am to just after lunch. Then, he would fall asleep until night, and the process would begin.
“I would be in the trucks, late at night, loading the boxes and I didn’t think once: ‘I want to stop this, this is too much,” said Patterson. “Not once I let that thought cross me. I always knew that I was going to continue with this, because this is in my heart.”
“You have to have faith the size of a mustard seed, and just keep the ball rolling,” he added.
A new money injection in sports would be supposed to make a living from the track. Several new competitions announced their intentions to organize new meetings in 2025, the most lucrative of which was the Grand Slam track. Found by former Olympic champion Michael Johnson, and backed by a $ 30 million advertisement in funds, the circuit announced that it would organize four meetings and not only pay $ 3 million in total awards in money, but also pay a group that agreed to sign a six -digit contractual salary.
When Patterson opened his season in April by running 44.27 seconds in a match in Florida, possible sponsors began calling their agent, he said. He helped him win a wild card entry a month later for a Grand Slam track meeting in Florida, where he made a better staff of 43. Only two men in the world have run faster in the subsequent three months, which makes Patterson a legitimate threat to win a gold medal in the September World Championships in Tokyo.
Even better, the race also earned him $ 50,000, a sum that changes his career in a sport whose highest set and highest profile circuit compared to Patterson a fifth that amount for winning a 400 in one of its meetings at the end of May.
However, months after earning the money, the $ 50,000 owed to Patterson by Grand Slam Track has not yet been paid, he said, adding that he believes that the money will arrive in September. Under a fundamental deficit, the circuit ended its season after only three meetings, and has not yet paid athletes for awards for their first two competitions, in Jamaica and Florida. The company is “recapitizing,” said a spokesman in a statement, and “anticipates that investors’ funds reach our account imminently, and athletes are our top priority. Once these funds are received from our part, we will work to immediately process them to athletes.”
What provided Patterson’s performance in Grand Slam, more immediately, was an increase during the night in the attention of possible sponsors. At the end of May, Patterson silently put his two -week warning with his UPS manager. On June 5, the day after Patterson announced his long -awaited sponsorship with the Nike sportswear giant, he worked on his last day carrying boxes.
“Everyone (at UPS) was like, man, going to pursue that dream,” said Patterson.
Part of that dream was made when he won the American title on Saturday while crossing the finish line in a Nike single.
“It won’t always be easy,” he said. “If I would, you know, everyone would be champions of us.”
Patterson said he understands why his time has attracted so much interest. The notion of an athlete who needs a second job to finance a first love is largely unknown in the main national leagues. Even so, he said he wants to be known for more than what he did in his old workplace. And he will be in the September World Championship, in case Patterson delivers the goods, once again.
