Sport has never been a level playing field as Chris Tomlinson highlighted when he followed up the admission that he has come close to seeking an alternative career by taking a Croatian football legend to task. Just as you should not put all your eggs in one basket, neither should you invest £64,000 a week on Alen Boksic.

Tomlinson has just cause to be fed up with the gripes from gossiping laymen about the state of British athletics. This is a hard business, proved by the scenario in which our top long jumper had to rent out his house and consider a new job because his funding was in doubt. “After the indoor season I considered quitting the sport,” the 25-year-old said. “I had lost my funding and my equipment contract had run out.”

He revealed that this was not the first time that he had been plagued by self-doubts. “A few years ago I questioned why I was even doing the long jump,” he said. “It’s hard. I’m a Middlesbrough fan and I’ll probably get slaughtered for saying this, but how do these footballers justify what they’re paid? There was this player at Boro called Alen Boksic and he was on £64,000. And he strolled about.

“I know there’s others like Steven Gerrard and John Terry who work very hard. Gareth Southgate, now the manager, did as a player, but some of them just stroll about for £30,000 a week. I know from the fans I talk to that it’s getting to them, and I know that the work I put in is more than they do.”

Tomlinson is ranked fourteenth in the world, set a new British record of 8.29 metres in Germany in July, and then soared to 8.50, only for it to be judged a marginal foul. Louis Tsatoumas, of Greece, has been leaps ahead of the rest this year, but Tomlinson will trust his instincts when he begins competition a week tomorrow.

“You can get too technical with the long jump, God yes,” he said. “I’m not bothered about how it looks, just about getting a good, legal jump. That 8.50 I jumped told me it’s in my body waiting to come out. I’d been where only seven other men in the world had been. When I was in the air it was like I was there for ages. It was mini-seconds but it was flying, it felt perfect.”

Like Greg Rutherford, his compatriot, Tomlinson is thinking big. Acknowledging that British athletics is in a transitional period, he knows that he is one of a select band of seasoned campaigners who UK Athletics need to paper over the cracks. “Getting a World Championship medal would be a step for me towards competing for an Olympic gold in Beijing,” he said. Success in China next year would be a small step for Britain but a giant leap for Tomlinson.

Boksic and his ilk may be able to settle down into a postsporting life of luxury and Sunseeker yachts, but Tomlinson knows that the material gains of athletics are modest. “Getting an Olympic gold is the only way my life would change dramatically through athletics,” he said. “It’s about what you do on the day. One mistake, like getting a poor start in the 100 metres, and it’s over, all that work gone.”

The promise has been there as long as the resilience. In 2002, he broke both his wrists in a weight-training accident, but bounced back three months later to break Lynn Davies’s 34-year-old British record. Fifth place in the Olympic final in Athens is evidence of his ability to produce on the big stage, but there have been disappointments, not least at the 2003 World Championships when he was the second best qualifier but did not make the top eight. Whatever happens next week, one thing is clear – like his peers in the British team, Tomlinson is not in it for the money.