Mondo Duplantis clears 6.31 m in Uppsala, his fifteenth pole vault world record
At his own indoor meeting in Sweden he took four jumps, raised the bar 23 cm after 6.08 and went over first time, one centimetre above his Tokyo mark.
Photograph: Armand Duplantis in pole vault qualifying at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, by Aeltegop, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsArmand Duplantis broke the pole vault world record for the 15th time on Thursday evening at the Mondo Classic in Uppsala, the indoor meeting that carries his name in the Swedish town where he was born. He cleared 6.31 m on his first attempt. The previous record, 6.30 m, was his own, set winning the world title in Tokyo last September.
It took four jumps. He went over 5.65, 5.90 and 6.08, all first time, then asked for the bar to go up 23 centimetres to a world record height, cleared it, and stopped. Norway's Sondre Guttormsen was second with 6.00 m. Greece's Emmanouil Karalis, who had jumped 6.17 m at his national indoor championships this winter, the highest ever by anyone other than Duplantis, had three failures at 6.00.
Duplantis, 26, has held the record since 6.17 m in 2020. It was the first time he had broken it indoors, and only the second time on Swedish soil. He told the crowd Uppsala was his home and said he had tried something new and pushed himself to the limit. Reports from the meeting said he had lengthened his run-up to handle a stiffer pole.
World Athletics ratified the mark in July, alongside the records set later in the spring. Karalis and Duplantis met again nine days later at the World Indoor Championships in Toruń.
Four jumps, one record, home by dinner. It is hard to think of another athlete who makes the hardest thing in a sport look like a routine.
Sources: World Athletics; New Straits Times (AFP).
