PARIS — When he was a young pole vault prodigy practicing jumps in his parents’ Louisiana backyard, Armand “Mondo” Duplantis would inevitably dream up the same scenario.
He’d be competing in the Olympic final. The bar would be at world-record height. And he’d have one jump left.
“I must have visualized that moment a zillion times in my life,” Duplantis said.
It’s tempting to say that Duplantis’ childhood dream became reality at the Stade De France on Monday night, but his younger self couldn’t possibly have been this imaginative or impractical. The childhood fantasy didn’t include Duplantis breaking the world record for the ninth time in four-plus years. Nor did it include his biggest rivals cheering him on from beside the runway. Nor did it include a meet-and-greet with the King and Queen of Sweden afterward.
Duplantis, the American-born Swedish pole vaulting sensation, added to his lore by leaving no goal unaccomplished. He won the Olympic pole vault title by clearing the bar at 6 meters, then eclipsed the Olympic record with a jump of 6.10 meters, then added a centimeter to his world record on his third and final attempt at 6.25 meters.
When asked if this was the greatest night of his brief yet illustrious career, Duplantis didn’t hesitate to say yes.
“If I don’t beat this moment the rest of my career, I’m pretty OK with that,” he said. “I don’t think you can really get much better than what just happened.”
The son of a Swedish heptathlete and an American pole vaulter, Duplantis boasts a devilish combination of strength, speed, power and precision that few others in his sport can match. He’s the caliber of athlete that probably would have gravitated to another sport, except that his parents had a pole vault pit in their backyard and he displayed a passion for it soon after he was out of diapers.
Now Duplantis is to pole vault what Usain Bolt was to sprinting, Michael Phelps was to swimming or Simone Biles is to gymnastics. The two-time world champion and two-time Olympic champion already is the greatest to ever do his sport and he still is just entering his athletic prime.
Sam Kendricks, the American pole vaulter who claimed silver behind Duplantis on Monday, said that what makes the Swede so extraordinary is his combination of a sprinter’s speed and a pole vaulter’s courage. When you combine both those qualities, Kendricks said, “then you have something special.”
The greatest compliment to Duplantis is that Tuesday’s pole vault competition didn’t really get interesting until after he’d already won gold. Only then did the French crowd turn its attention to the pole vault because they knew Duplantis was about to go record chasing.
When Duplantis went after the world record, he said it helped him that he felt like had nothing to lose.
“I’d already broken the Olympic record,” he said.” I was an Olympic champion for the second time. That mentality was pretty important.”
Equally important was the comforting sense of déjà vu he felt as he stood at the back of the runway awaiting his final jump.
“It felt like I had already been in this moment 1,000 times,” Duplantis said, “because I’d had this dream since I was just a little kid in my parents’ backyard.”
Source Agencies
