What superlatives are left to describe Mondo Duplantis?
He is a two-time Olympic champion, and at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo he became a three-time world champion and a 14-time world record-breaker - and the world’s greatest pole vaulter by a considerable margin.
In Tokyo’s Japan National Stadium, the margin was 30cm as the Swedish supremo broke yet another barrier, becoming the first man to clear 6.30m* as he claimed his third world title in four years. “It’s better than I could have imagined,” he said afterwards.
“To give you guys this world record is amazing.” He later explained: “For the past two weeks, I really enjoyed being in Tokyo.
“I feel the only way to leave Japan was to set the world record – and that was my mentality. I knew I had the record in me and I’m glad that it all worked out.”
The last time he competed in this arena, four years ago, Duplantis won his first Olympic gold medal with 6.02m, in front of empty grandstands during the Covid-19 pandemic with his personal best being 6.10m. Since then, he has taken the pole vault into the stratosphere, lifting the world record from 6.16m to 6.30m.
This year he has improved to 6.27m indoors in France in February, 6.28m in his hometown Stockholm at the Diamond League meeting and 6.29m in Budapest, before his Tokyo heroics. Simply the best pole vaulter of these times, his winning streak is now 36 finals, with one of the few targets now left for him being Sergey Bubka’s record of 17 world records.
At 25-years-old, Duplantis is only halfway through his career. Greece’s star vaulter, Emmanouil Karalis had hoped to challenge him after becoming the fourth best in history this year (6.08m), but once the rest of the field was eliminated at six metres, the Swede toyed with his remaining challenger.
Karalis was pushed beyond his previous limit in an effort to stay in the competition. He made good but failed attempts at 6.10m and 6.15m, only to watch Duplantis float over each height untroubled.
Having tormented his competitors, Duplantis then teased the crowd with two near misses, before sliding over the bar on his final attempt, releasing an explosion of energy in the stadium.
Duplantis and Karalis have been competing against each other since they were 15, and both were on the podium at the World U18 Championships. Duplantis has won 38 times out of 39 meetings, that one anomaly from the 2018 World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, when both were 18.
Featuring three of the top four pole vaulters in history, this competition was always shaping as historic. As the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) he’s not only raising his own standards year on year, he’s lifting his competitors.
*Subject to the usual ratification procedure
