It is also a gamble from the athlete's point of view. If they are more interested in money than setting the record, I understand why they are making this choice. But as an athlete you never know if or when you will be in the same physical form again.
There have been 11 new world records since his last record (last 10 by Aramand Duplantis). The latest record set this year is 12cm higher than Bubka's best jump. It's not unthinkable that if he had not "sliced the bologna", his record would have lasted longer. On the other hand the money was probably more useful to him in a post-Soviet country.
Maybe it automatically extends it when you are using it?
This is at least what we do for our web application, where users are automatically refreshed indefinitely unless they are inactive for more than a few days (enough to cover Saturday/Sunday when they are not working). We have an access token that is refreshed in 5 minute intervals. The refresh request also provides a new refresh token with an extended expiration. A deactivated user can use it for a maximum of a few minutes until the access token expires, because the refresh request will fail. It's fine for our use case, but it may not be for everyone. We could potentially include a token black-list in the backend for emergency uses, but we haven't seen the need for it yet.
There have been 11 new world records since his last record (last 10 by Aramand Duplantis). The latest record set this year is 12cm higher than Bubka's best jump. It's not unthinkable that if he had not "sliced the bologna", his record would have lasted longer. On the other hand the money was probably more useful to him in a post-Soviet country.