Half man, half pole, lives in his own universe. The only laws, the physics too, the power of mitigated gravity, are what he imposes. And he is governed only by one, to jump higher every month of his life, more or less. Or every seven months, which is the time that has passed among its gold its next world plusmarca (6,26m, August 25, Chorów, Poland) and their victory at the rally the town of the Michelin, Del Puy de Dôme and his friend Renaud Lavillenie, with world record, of Course, 6.27m to the first attempt, touching the midnight of the last day of the last day of February 2025.
The Mozart of the pole, Swedish passport, life in Louisiana, son of American pertiguist and Swedish heptatleta, turned 25 last September, two less than the centimeters in which he has temporarily set his new limit. One hours before the competition, the athlete had announced a new public aspect of his personality, that of the composer and singer and the launch of his first song, Bop. “It’s amazing that it happened,” he exclaimed. “The never seen.”
The new worldwide plusmarca, the eleventh that he achieves in five years, underlines both its inability to find its limits – reveal, strength, technical precision, daring – as its generosity, its inability to slow down whatever the competition. In a demonstration of economy and energy and nervous efficiency, it only needed five jumps, no null: 5.65m, 5.91m, 6.02m, 6.07 and 6.27m. This brand is the second record of the world that gives its friend and protector Renaud Lavillenie, his older brother in athletics, which organizes the Clermont Ferrand meeting, after the 6.22m that jumped in 2023. The economic reward is infinitely less than the emotional. And its meaning in terms of the history of athletics. When in February 2020 he beat the world record for the first time, 6.17m on Torun’s covered track, Duplantis dispossed the Plusmarca to the Lavillenie himself, which had jumped 6.16m six years before before his Majesty Serguei Bubka in his sanctuary of Donetsk (Ukraine). The Ukrainian pavilion burned shortly after, the product of a Russian attack, and Mondo Duplantis began to fly free. With 20 years he also achieved a few weeks later, with Covid’s pandemic at the doors of the world, his second record (6.18m) in Glasgow. The most daring of the forecasting began fantasizing with the 6.25m barrier. When in 2024, at age 24, he first managed to overcome his age in centimeters, with the 6.25m of Paris, the 6.30m border already seemed simple. The new barrier dares to look at it. “I will arrive,” said an athlete who has barely had injuries in his life. “But I will have to jump 6.28m, 6.29m …”
Behind him, in Clermont Ferrand, far, his friend Manolo Karalis (6.02m), already bronze in the Paris Games. The old lavillenie, lame, operated, strong, contributed to the party with a jump of 5.91 to 38 years.
