The Swedish pole vaulter crowned an evening with three world records. He flies over 6.21 like it’s child’s play. But that has always been his sport for him.
The stick throws him into the sky like a spring: Armand Duplantis jumps a world record of 6.21 m in the World Cup final.
He plays with the elements and does so with an ease that is almost unbelievable. A few weeks ago, Armand Duplantis set the outdoor world record at 6.16m. After that, he dropped 6.20, but changed his mind at the last moment and said he wanted to show something special at the World Championships in Eugene. And he did. The audience was already ecstatic because they had seen two world records in less than two hours. Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan ran the 100m hurdles in the semifinals in 12.12 and topped it in the final with a 12.06.
When all other competitions were over and he had the stadium all to himself, Duplantis celebrated his air show. He was the clear winner with a jump of 6.00 m, after which he had the bar set at 6.06 to warm up, because a world champion had never flown so high before. When he ticked that off, he went to 6.21. He did it on the second try and jumped a somersault on the track as an encore. Now you don’t have to say that it’s usually a little higher in the hall when there’s no wind. Duplantis jumped there in March, 6.20 – now he has surpassed himself outdoors.
In addition to the run-up in Eugene, as in the 6.16 m jump in Stockholm, Renaud Lavillenie, once Olympic champion and world record holder, was one of the defeated that evening. He checked the wind, gave Duplanti’s hand signals, made himself the coach of the new high-flyer. This sailed to the record, then the two lay in each other’s arms.
Armand Duplantis jumps world record in Stockholm, coached by Renaud Lavillenie.
Lavillenie and Duplantis are best friends despite being sporting rivals and one being 13 years older than the other. When he was young, the Swede had a poster of the Frenchman hanging over his bed, who was his big role model. And yet, with one bold leap, he snatched pole vault dominance from him.
That happened in 2018 in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Duplantis sailed over 6.05 m and became European Champion. Lavillenie had previously won this title three times in a row. Now he went to the new champion and whispered something in his ear, which he later repeated in front of the journalists: “Enjoy the moment, not many will be so beautiful.”
Contest in the garden of Lavillenie
Pole vaulters are a breed of their own. If there is usually an adrenaline-driven rivalry in athletics, they feel connected to each other. They explain this by saying that their competitions last hours and they have a lot of time to exchange ideas between jumps.
Lavillenie is a keen jumper who had a facility built in his garden at home so that he could fly through the air for a bit of fun while he was training.
The Frenchman likes to invite colleagues over, then meat is thrown on the grill and there is a little competition. Duplantis has been there several times. He knows this atmosphere very well, because in the first years of his life as a jumper he also trained in the garden. His father Greg Duplantis, now 60 years old, was one of the best Americans of his generation with a personal best of 5.80 m.
At 15, his son Armand decided to compete for Sweden, the home country of his mother Helena, a former heptathlete and volleyball player. The father once admitted that even then it was thought that the son could one day save himself the tough American selection competitions for major events.
Greg Duplantis wanted to pass on his passion for pole vaulting to his children and built a training facility with a couple of mattresses. Later he bought a real mat and auctioned off a few meters of tartan track for the inrun. Little Armand had two older brothers whom he looked on with envy at first. At the age of three he picked up a broomstick and hopped onto the sofa with it.
In 2020, his mother wrote in an open letter to her son that he had trained so hard that the sofa was soon ruined. He also started working on the first record back then: the best performance for the Duplantis child, who most often had to have a wound sewn up by the doctor.
Born to fly
At the age of four, the boy, who was nicknamed Mondo by one of the brothers, was allowed to train in the garden for the first time. His mother wrote that he had always been a child of the air. When he wasn’t jumping, he swung his way through the garden on a rope or climbed the tallest trees. “I think you were born to fly,” says the open letter.
Mondo was the most gifted of the children. There are stats maniacs who already have world best lists for the junior categories. Duplantis broke all records from the age of seven. This was not only due to playful ease, but also to huge ambition. The mother remembers that she closed the kitchen window because he screamed and raved so much when his jumps in the garden didn’t turn out the way he wanted.
He couldn’t lose anyway, neither in sports nor at cards. Once, as a student, he fell at the first obstacle in a hurdle race, jumped up again immediately – and won the competition.
When he reached heights of 5.20 m in the pole vault, his father transferred the training to the sports facility of the local university for safety reasons. In 2020, however, he returned to the garden. It was the first year of the pandemic, all sports fields in the USA were closed and the son had to refresh the home facility with his father before he could jump. Everything was a little rotten and animals ate their way through the mat, says Armand Duplantis. But he completed jumps that went up to 5.10 m high in just six steps.
The pole vaulters were the first track and field athletes to hold an international competition again in 2020 despite the Corona crisis: The American Sam Kendricks, Lavillenie and Duplantis competed by each trying to jump over five meters as often as possible in 30 minutes on their private facility . The whole thing was connected to a video stream.
Lavillenie and Duplantis shared the victory with 36 jumps each. So they flew over the bar every 50 seconds. Anyone who has ever watched a pole vaulter compete cannot imagine how that is supposed to work. The two winners jumped as if the pictures were running faster.
It is no coincidence that Duplantis found the best possible training conditions at home with his parents in Louisiana. For years, the parents have been an integral part of the “Team Duplantis”, which was built around the jumper in high school.
Father Greg is the jumping coach, mother Helena is responsible for strength and conditioning. They formed an athlete who is not just a gifted aviator. As a junior, Mondo Duplantis sprinted the 100 meters in 10.5 seconds and jumped over seven meters.
He’s the athlete who starts off at the fastest pace and he has the strength to bend the toughest of bars. This creates an incredible catapult effect. The Swede also has the technology to use it optimally. That makes him the best jumper the world has ever seen.
The Duplantis team does not only do a good job on the sports field. It was a wise decision to let the lad start for Sweden and thus save him from a lot of pressure. In 2018, after just one year at university, he signed his first professional contracts. The timing was ideal, because a lot of money became available at outfitter Puma after Usain Bolt’s resignation.
Already a multimillionaire at the age of 22
According to the Swedish newspaper “Sportbladet”, the jumper gets an annual fixed salary of one million dollars. There are also bonuses, entry fees and prize money. He is also under contract with Red Bull. He does not advance into the spheres of Usain Bolt, whose annual income “Forbes” estimated at 34 million dollars towards the end of his career. But he is probably the best-earning track and field athlete in the world at the moment.
In Eugene, he won the only international title that he still lacks with indescribable ease, and that at the age of only 22. In the technically demanding discipline of pole vaulting, athletes usually need to be in their mid-20s before they are able to perform at their best. But if you start at the age of three and, according to your own words, have already completed thousands of jumps in your garden during your childhood and adolescence, different standards apply.
Duplantis did not live in Eugene with the rest of the Swedish team on the University of Oregon campus, but had stayed nearby with his girlfriend Desiré Inglander, a model, in a hotel rented by Puma. The newspaper “Aftonbladet” asked him in advance if he felt any uncertainty. His answer: «No. I only see a gold medal.”
The father had previously told the newspaper his son was faster and more explosive than ever. Therefore, he will jump a stick that is harder than any he has used before. It was impressive to see how he compressed it with speed and power and then used it like a spring. 6.21 m is obviously not the limit of Armand Duplantis. Only heaven knows where he will fly to.