Another world record for Duplantis
Swede sets 11th global best of career in pole vault in All Star Perche meet in France
A month that had been dominated by world records on the track and roads concluded with a global best in the men’s pole vault when Mondo Duplantis of Sweden cleared 6.27 meters (20 feet 6¾ inches) in the All Star Perche meet in Clermont-Ferrand, France, on Friday.
The two-time defending Olympic champion cleared the height on his first attempt to add a centimeter to his previous world record of 6.26 (20-6½) that he had set in the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in Chorzow, Poland, last August.
It was the 11th world record of his career, and as he had done previously, he did not attempt to clear another height after bettering the previous mark by a centimeter.
“I just felt really good,” Duplantis was quoted as saying in an Agence France-Presse story. “What can I say. I came here to do it. I put everything in place to do it. The run-up worked really well. I just did it.”
The 25-year-old Duplantis, who had opened the season by clearing a winning height of 6.10 (20-0) in the ISTAF Indoor meet in Berlin on Feb. 14, did not register a miss during the competition in which Emmanouil Karalis of Greece finished second at a national-record height of 6.02 (19-9) and a best-ever six men cleared 5.91 (19-4¾) or higher.
After making 5.65 (18-6½) on his first attempt, Duplantis passed at 5.75 (18-10¼) and 5.85 (19-2¼) before making his initial attempts at 5.91 (19-4¾), 6.02 (19-9) and 6.07 (19-11).
The clearance at 6.07 gave him his 21st consecutive victory, as Karalis missed his first attempt at that height and then called it a day while reportedly dealing with leg cramps.
Duplantis then cleared 6.27 on his first try while a song, called “Bop”, that he had recently released, played over the public address system.
“That was my song that was playing,” he said. “When I made this song a couple of months ago, I thought this would be a perfect song to jump to here. That's why I rushed it out.”
The world record by Duplantis came on the final day of a month in which global records had been set in the men’s 1,500 meters, mile (twice), 3,000, 5,000, half marathon, and 20-kilometer walk, as well in the infrequently contested 5,000-meter walk.
After Duplantis and Karalis, Kurtis Marschall of Australia, and Frenchmen Thibaut Collet, Baptiste Thierry, and Renaud Lavillenie each cleared 5.91 (19-4¾).
Marschall and Collet cleared the height on their first attempts, but Marschall was awarded third place on a tiebreaker. Thierry finished fifth because he cleared 5.91 on his second attempt, while Lavillenie placed sixth because he needed three tries to get over that height.
The 38-year-old Lavillenie won the 2012 Olympic Games in London and was the silver medalist in Rio de Janeiro four years later.
He is also the meet director of the All Star Perche and the last man to have held the world record before Duplantis, as his 6.16 (20-2) clearance on Feb. 15 of 2014 stood as the global best until the 20-year-old Swede cleared 6.17 (20-2¾) on Feb. 8 of 2020.
That was the first of two world records that Duplantis set that year and he raised the global best three times in 2022, twice in ’23, and three more times last year.
While Angelica Moser of Switzerland posted her fifth victory of the season without a loss in winning the women’s pole vault at 4.76 (15-7¼) on Friday, the meet belonged to Duplantis, who had cleared a then-world record of 6.22 (20-4¾) in the All Star Perche two years ago.
“Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s not, but there’s a lot of hard work, hardship, bad days, good days, everything in between that gets you to the easier moments,” he said when talking about the world records he has set. “It’s always special. It’s a crazy feeling every time. It’s like a feeling of euphoria. It’s hard to explain.”