45 meters, 22 steps, in his hands, a 5.20 meter yellow pole that only he can bend, so hard. . Newton does not fail. Energy is transformed. Entry speed becomes force, force becomes catapult and flight and acrobatics in the air. The pavilion, which has held its breath, exhales a long breath of air in an ooooh! childish that excites. The endless wonder.
There was no happier person than him, except perhaps the Greek’s father and coach. He jumped 6.17m, surpassing the myths Sergei Bubka and Renaud Lavillenie in one fell swoop and rose to second best in history, still far from Duplantis’ 6.31m, the result of his 15th consecutive world record. “It’s good that you jumped so much,” he says. “It’s good for me not to settle, to know that I have to continue progressing.” Then, on the track, goodbye friendship. Goodbye to such affectionate gestures and the Paris Games, Manolo with a little fan cooling off Mondo who is sweating before breaking records and winning gold medals. Manolo has come out of the shadows. Each one in a corner, boxers between two rounds. He is once again the rival from his youthful times who jumped even more than the Swede, only 10 days younger. They are both 26 years old. After years of depression, of suffering racism in Greece, Karalis, an Athenian with a Greek father and a Ugandan mother, is resurrected. Duplantis’ only rival is no longer infinity. He doesn’t even try. After jumping 6.25m and defeating the indomitable Athenian, Duplantis, tired, takes up the poles. For the first time in his streak of 39 victories, he needed six jumps to defeat the second. .
The two best in history face each other, hand in hand, at heights where only they do not suffer from vertigo. Karalis jumps 6.05m the first time and goes from trying 6.10m and 6.15m. He is advised by his father and George Pomaski, also the coach of two-time Olympic champion long jumper Miltiadis Tentoglou. He forces Duplantis to wear himself out jumping both heights. Duplantis leaves him alone at 6.20m. The never seen. No sense. In his fall, Karalis brushes the bar minimally, enough for him to fall. He puts his hands to his head. It was so close. As if in a reflex action. The blonde Swede, on the bench. He also puts his hands in his hair. Karalis goes from 6.20m. Only at 6.25m do their paths cross. Trembling, but firm, the ribbon resists the passage of Duplantis’s body. It’s Karalis’s turn to hit. Sirtaki. Karalis’s afro ponytail bounces with every hit of her feet on the ground. 20 steps. He touches the bar, which falls. No other in history, except the eternal Swede, has ever attempted that height. Duplantis surpassed it for the first time a little over a year ago at the Paris Games. He was the man on the moon, which is already approaching for others, so quickly.
Mondo Duplantis is immense and selfish, like all champions, and he does not accept not being number one, but he does not exaggerate. Like a magnet that attracts prodigies, a battery that lends light to others — a Hispanic Canadian, Cristóbal Morales, who wins the 400m in less than 45 seconds (44.76s), for example, a Swiss heptathlete, a Venezuelan triple jumper, a brotherhood of athletic talents, pure art, a Scot with sunglasses, Josh Kerr, who does 200m in the clouds to resist the terrible arrival of the Olympic champion Cole Hocker, in the last stretch of the 3,000m (7m 35.56s)– admits the competition in its afternoon of glory, and even encourages it.
Heptathlon record
There was a world record, however, in the room. Behind the Swede, cuckoo, a Swiss.
Simon Ehammer, a tough Swiss with the granite of his Alps, and a jumper like his fallow deer, does not have the fame or fortune of Mondo Duplantis, nor will he ever have it, although he does not lack merits, since he not only pole vaults, but he is good at everything, races, jumps, throws, hurdles, smooth, and he has broken on the hot track of Torun, in its tartan and in its corridors, a world record for the toughest, that of heptathlon that the American god Ashton Eaton, a prodigy of nature and genes, had owned for 14 years. Ehammer, 26 years old, is a nuclear power plant who has wasted energy and oxygen for two days without hardly any sleep or rest, and still had Saturday left over to run 1,000 agonizing meters in less than 2m 43s. He falls exhausted onto the track after crossing the finish line in 2m 41.04s. His teammates, the crazy rope of the combined team that never fails, help him get up. The end of suffering, the beginning of joy, for Ehammer, after a career as a sprinter (6.69s in the 60 meter dash; 7.52s with hurdles), long jumper (8.16m), high jumper (2.02m) and pole vault (5.30m) and shot putter (14.87m). One tenth better than Eaton in the 60m, 16 hundredths faster in the hurdles, 10 centimeters taller in the pole vault, and 31 centimeters stronger in weight, the North American only surpasses him by one centimeter in height and length. And compared to Eaton’s 6,645 points, achieved above all with a magnificent final 1,000 (2m 32.77s), 6,670 that erase them.
Some of the marks, the length or the hurdles, would have even allowed him to fight for medals in the respective competitions. It is the model of the Spanish jumper Eusebio Cáceres, a sentimental combinero, who on the eve of the length final, enjoys it and celebrates it in the stands, and remembers that when he competes only in length, Ehammer, who has a best mark of 8.45m, has been a European medalist. If in decathlon, which adds 400m, If in decathlon, which adds 400m, discus and javelin, Ehammer does not shine, unlike Eaton, a double Olympic champion, in the discipline of the seven events he has triumphed since he was 22 years old: he was world runner-up in 2022 and champion two years ago in Glasgow.
Silver by Yulimar Rojas
When she fell in the sand, a fighter, tenacious, she saw a red indicator pinned on the measuring tape, at a height of 15.74 meters, indicating the triple jump world record, the mark that she herself broke in Belgrade four years ago. How far away the time, how far away the mark of the 30-year-old Yulimar who continues to fight to regain her strength, the spring, the jump of the Achilles tendon that was torn two years ago. She doesn’t have the bounce or the speed that made her the best in history, but she maintains the technique and, above all, the determination that is reinforced, seriously, hard, by Iván Pedroso directing her from the stands. In an overcrowded final (17 athletes) and a low level (nine of them did not even reach 14 meters), Yulimar Rojas found herself at a level that she had never been to, and she did not get depressed. On the contrary. With an ability to compete that she does not lose, she suffered to achieve happiness, which is now, a silver medal with 14.86m, the plate that the Tokyo Olympic champion usually left for her rivals. It is the second best jump since the injury. A step forward that left her just nine centimeters behind the gold of the Cuban Leyanis Pérez (14.95m).
