Duplantis soars to impossible heights

Swedish-American pole-vaulter Mondo Duplantis breaks multiple records, cementing his status as an all-time great

- Rudraneil Sengupta

In 2024, there were athletes, and then there was Mondo Duplantis. To describe that season, words are hard to come by, and Duplantis himself mutters things like "weird" and "surreal".

But if there's one word that, casting aside superlatives, captures the essence of the 25-year-old Swedish-American pole-vaulter's year—15 wins in 15 competitions, world champion, European Champion, Olympic champion, and three-time world record breaker—it's this: impossible.

Any athlete operating in the top tier would like to believe that they are chasing the impossible, that they are on a quest to turn dreams into reality.

Once in a generation, that really happens. Duplantis belongs, with consummate ease, in the same sphere as Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Simone Biles and Eliud Kipchoge. So far ahead of the rest that during the Paris Olympics, with the pole-vault competition done—in fact all events for the day were over—and the gold in his pocket, Duplantis, who still had a couple of jumps left, if he wished to take them, decided to go for the world record.

More than 77,000 people inside the sweltering, heaving Stade De France roared and chanted, "Mondo, Mondo, Mondo". Even his opponents, the entire pool of finalists in the men's pole vault, stood on the sidelines egging him on. He had won the Olympic gold with a 6.0m jump, so he first loosened up with a 6.10m jump to set the Olympic record. Then he raised the bar to 6.25m, jack-knifed and soared over it like only he can, accompanied by a deafening wall of sound, to break the world record for the ninth time.

Duplantis had become the first man to break the pole-vault world record in an Olympic final and the first to win back-to-back Olympic golds in the event since US's Bob Richards in 1952 and 1956.