Olympic champion successfully defends his title and breaks the world record in remarkable style

The sweetest point in a successful pole vault, says Mondo Duplantis, is the start of the freefall – when the realisation dawns that the bar has been cleared, the job done.

It will never have felt sweeter to him than on Monday night (August 5), when the American-born Swede not only successfully defended his Olympic title but finished with the ultimate flourish when also broke his own world record – again – with his final leap of the night.

Finishing first and creating history are two habits the 24-year-old just can’t seem to break. There was something both familiar yet otherworldly about this performance that culminated in a soaring clearance of 6.25m.

While the rest of the field entered the competition at a lower height – this time it was 5.50m – the world and European champion opted to sit things out for a while, until 5.70m. He promptly cleared that, then sat back down again.

When Duplantis opted to get back in on the action, at 5.85m, his chief competitors for the evening had begun to emerge in the form of USA’s Sam Kendricks and Greek European silver medallist Emmanouil Karalis.

Kendricks was the only one of that trio not to clear that mark first time, prompting him to skip forward to 5.90m – a height at which he, Karalis and last year's world silver medallist Ernest John Obiena traded first-time clearances.

The 2019 world champion went clear again at 5.95m, a feat matched immediately by Duplantis as if to underline who was really in charge, while Obiena departed, the Greek toiled and decided to try again at 6.00m

No silver medallist in the history of the Games has breached that barrier and, while Duplantis made clearing it look incredibly easy, it was a step too far for his fellow competitors.

With the gold medal secured, it was time to look upwards and the bar was set to 6.10m. Having missed out on Thiago Braz’s Olympic record of 6.03m by one centimetre at the Tokyo Games, Duplantis wanted that particular piece of history to himself and took one attempt to do it.

A roar of approval spread through the Stade de France stands when the crowd realised that the next challenge was now going to be 6.25m. Duplantis hit the bar with the first attempt, then the second but sailed over with the third and ran straight into the arms of his supporters, a group that included his partner but also his mother and father, who are also his coaches.

“I haven’t processed how fantastic that moment was,” he said, having also been congratulated by the King of Sweden. “It’s one of those things that doesn’t really feel real, such an out of body experience. It’s still hard to kind of land right now.

"What can I say? I just broke a world record at the Olympics, the biggest possible stage for a pole vaulter. The biggest dream since a kid was to break the world record at the Olympics, and I’ve been able to do that in front of the most ridiculous crowd I’ve ever competed in front of.”

The capacity crowd at the Stade de France did indeed present a different challenge in itself when it came to that final attempt, that moment of truth.

“I tried to clear my thoughts as much as I could,” said Duplantis. “The crowd was going crazy. It was so loud in there, it sounded like an American football game. I have a little bit of experience being in a 100,000 capacity stadium, but I was never the centre of attention. I was just trying to channel the energy everybody was giving me, and they were giving me a lot of it. It worked out.

“I think I can do it [break the world record] again, but I don’t really care right now. I’m so happy, I’m going to enjoy this very much. I’ve got my family here, my girl here, some of my best friends here. The party is going to be pretty big.”

For Kendricks, there was plenty of cause for celebration, too. He admitted to having been “broken” by his last Olympic experience, when he was unable to compete after testing positive for Covid upon his arrival in Tokyo.

“It’s a hard-fought privilege,” he said of his silver medal. “I told my wife after Tokyo, I don’t know if I can go back. It’s not important anymore. But there’s a lot of excitement that comes along with the Olympics. Some call it the world's biggest scam, but it’s a very positive scam.”

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