Mondo Duplantis
The vaulter who keeps raising the bar. Armand Duplantis has broken the pole vault world record 15 times, one centimetre at a time, and turned every big meet into a record watch.
Duplantis in Stockholm, 2020: Bob Ramsak, CC BY-SA 4.0
A pit in the backyard
Armand Duplantis grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, in a family built for the pole vault. His father Greg was a vaulter who cleared well over five and a half metres, and his mother Helena, who is Swedish, was a heptathlete and volleyball player. The family put a runway and landing pit in the backyard, and Mondo was swinging on a pole before he could ride a bike.
Because of his mother he chose to compete for Sweden. He won the world youth title at 15 and the world under-20 title at 18, and in 2018 he cleared 6.05 metres to win the senior European title as a teenager, a world under-20 record that still stands.
One centimetre at a time
In 2020 he broke Renaud Lavillenie's world record of 6.16 metres by clearing 6.17 indoors in Torun, Poland. Since then he has moved the record up almost always by a single centimetre. That is smart business, since meets pay big bonuses for world records, but it is also the honest truth of the event: every centimetre at that height is brutally hard.
He broke it in Belgrade, Eugene, Clermont-Ferrand, Xiamen, Chorzow, Stockholm and Budapest. At the Paris Olympics in 2024 he won gold and then cleared 6.25 metres with the stadium on its feet. At the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo he went over 6.30 on his final attempt, and in 2026 he raised it again to 6.31, his 15th world record.
Why he is so far ahead
Duplantis is not the tallest vaulter, but he is one of the fastest down the runway, and speed is what lets a vaulter carry a stiffer pole. His technique, polished by his father, wastes almost nothing on the way up. He has cleared six metres or higher in more competitions than anyone in history, often winning by such a margin that his rivals are watching him chase the record alone.
He also wins when it matters: two Olympic golds, three outdoor world titles and four indoor world titles, plus the World Athlete of the Year award four times.
The champion lesson
Mondo's career shows that a record does not have to be smashed to be special. Steady, patient improvement, repeated for years, can build a wall of numbers that the rest of the world will chase for decades.
Away from the runway Duplantis is famously relaxed. He released a pop song called Bop in 2025, and he still trains as a family affair, with his father Greg coaching his technique and his mother Helena guiding his fitness. His older brother Andreas was also a pole vaulter.
- Duplantis in Stockholm, 2020: Bob Ramsak, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Clearing 6 metres, 2019: Frankie Fouganthin, CC BY-SA 4.0
Text written by Shining Champion.
