It’s a bird, it’s a plane – no, it’s world record pole vaulter Duplantis
The Olympic champion soared over 6.29 metres in Budapest last month, leaving sports writers and fans in awe
[NEW YORK] With a 13th world record in the bag and an endless hunger for accolades to match his high-flying antics, peerless pole vaulter Armand Duplantis brings genuine celebrity swagger to this month’s World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
The back-to-back Olympic champion gave fans a taste of what to expect in the Japanese capital when he soared over 6.29 metres in Budapest last month, the latest in a series of performances that have left sports writers and fans struggling for superlatives.
“I love pushing myself and I love trying to get the most out of myself,” the Swedish athlete, more commonly known as Mondo, said in the run-up to the Sep 13-21 biennial showpiece.
“I just have this real internal drive and motivation that I just want to keep being better. I have short-term memory loss. I probably don’t let it soak in and forget my accomplishments too quickly.”
The record-keepers would be quick to remind him: the 25-year-old has lost just four times since he broke his first world record in February 2020, soaring 6.17 metres to break Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie’s record of 6.16 metres set six years prior.
He picked up his fifth Diamond League trophy at Zurich last month, two shy of Lavillenie’s record, after holding off Greek rival Emmanouil Karalis when he got over six metres on the fifth try.
A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU
Friday, 2 pm
Lifestyle
Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself.
And while field events have long played second-fiddle to the high-octane track, Duplantis’ profile will rival the biggest celebrities on the blocks at Tokyo’s National Stadium.
With looks and charisma that have drawn frequent comparisons to Hollywood star Timothee Chalamet, Duplantis has emerged as the kind of A-lister athletics has craved since Usain Bolt retired.
“It’s a lot of recognition of course,” said Duplantis, who already has a pair of world titles to match his Olympic haul. “It’s always quite big as far as just the impact that it has every time I break the record, which is quite cool. There’s more and more, I guess, really cool people that send me congrats and whatnot.”
He has used the same equipment since he first hit the 6.20-metre mark in Belgrade three years ago, and conceded that a change to a stiffer pole may be necessary to keep his record run going.
“I have one pole that’s just a tiny bit stiffer that I’ve tried to use and I haven’t really been able to use it, but I haven’t also tried it when I’m in really good shape,” he told reporters. “Hopefully in the near future when I am trying to get just a few more centimetres even out of myself, then I plan to go to another pole.”
Gene testing to take place in Tokyo
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe is confident that all female athletes at the World Athletics Championships will have undergone gene testing, after snags left some of them scrambling to meet the original Sep 1 deadline.
Athletes who arrive in Tokyo without having being tested can complete the process at the event.
“Although the vast majority of athletes will have been tested before they get to Tokyo, if there are outstanding athletes that still haven’t been tested, we have the ability to do that in Tokyo – but that is by no means an invitation for member federations to wait until they get to Tokyo,” said Coe on Thursday (Sep 4).
World Athletics approved the introduction of the test to determine if an athlete is biologically female at its council meeting in March.
The testing process has, however, not been all smooth sailing.
Canadian athletes had to rush to retake tests after learning two weeks ago that the ones they had done did not comply with the ruling body’s requirements.
French athletes had to seek meets and camps outside their country to complete the one-off tests after they were ruled illegal in France, and Coe said that they will be tested at a pre-Tokyo holding camp.
Coe added that over 90 per cent of all female athletes competing in Tokyo had now been tested. “We will pretty much have met our mission by the time we get to Tokyo,” he noted. “The mission was very clear. It wasn’t to necessarily have all the results in place, but it was to have the bulk of those female athletes tested.”
While the new rule has been met with some criticism, Coe said that the global federation has received overwhelming support for it.
“I don’t think that anybody would be particularly surprised that, given everything that we have done in the past to do what we can to preserve, protect and promote the female category, which is absolutely sacrosanct for me,” Coe explained. “We are testing for a Y chromosome. It’s non-invasive. It’s a one-off test and the information is destroyed. I think this is the right place for our sport to be.”
Looking ahead to Tokyo, Coe highlighted ticket sales, with 50,000 spectators expected on most nights and several sessions already sold out. He also pointed to the quality of the high-profile athletes taking part, including sprinters Noah Lyles, Letsile Tebogo and Julien Alfred, and hurdler Grant Holloway.
“We are in that period of athletics where we have got athletes for the ages,” he pointed out. “I’m not going to regale you with all the names of the headline acts, but for every one of those names, there is jaw-dropping potential.”
Copyright SPH Media. All rights reserved.
