How does he do it?

His leap of 6.28m in Stockholm represented world record number 12 in the career of Mondo Duplantis so far. Cathal Dennehy delves into the method behind the multiple Olympic, world and European champion’s extraordinary rise

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Long before the Olympic golds, world titles and world records, Mondo Duplantis was a student of his sport - one with an insatiable appetite for improvement. If he wasn’t on the pole vault runway that his dad built in their back yard in Lafayette, Louisiana, he was often thinking about it, conjuring up ways to hoist his body ever higher.

“I daydreamed about it at school all the time, about when I was going to get home and jump,” he says. “I feel like, from a pretty early age, I figured out this is what I was going to do.”

Duplantis cleared world age bests every year between seven and 12, all of which still stand, and his 12th senior world record at the recent Stockholm Diamond League showcased again that he’s a complete outlier. But Duplantis is also something else - an innovator.

It’s 10 years since he exploded on the international stage, winning the world U18 title in Cali, Colombia aged just 15, and much has been said and written about him since as his star went supernova.

But not much of it has examined exactly what he does to jump this high, given the technical minutiae of his event are often incomprehensible to those who've never tried it.

To gain a better understanding, AW spoke to Duplantis and to Mitch Krier, the longtime coach and husband of Greek star Katerina Stefanidi, the 2016 Olympic gold medallist and 2017 world champion.

Most pole vaulters can be grouped into one of two jumping styles: the Russian model or French model. The former is most associated with Vitaly Petrov, who coached Ukrainian Sergey Bubka and many other champions such as Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva and Brazil's Fabiana Murer.