26.5% of US elite athletes make under $15k a year and about half get no pay from their sport (2024 congressional 'Passing the Torch' report). How do track athletes actually keep going between college and a shoe deal? Family, side jobs, GoFundMe? And would fans backing an athlete directly, with full transparency on where every dollar goes, ever work in track?

Not necessarily the most versatile overall given that would mostly be the greatest decathletes but athletes good in events that don't normally have much overlap. The example that comes to mind for me was Peter Blank mostly a Javelin thrower who also had a 2.25m high jump which so far as I know is the best anyone has been in both a throwing and a non throwing event. He was also did at least one decathlon scoring 7651.

As per her recent Instagram post (which apparently we can't link here)