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With Armand Duplantis, the question is never whether he’ll win but how high he’ll fly. The 24-year-old Swede had broken the pole vault world record eight times, pushing the limits of possibility centimetre by centimetre. And here on a sultry night at the Stade de France, at 10.15pm, with the track races long finished and nobody moving an inch from their seat, he did it again.
The event really began when Duplantis cleared 6.00m. Greece’s Emmanouil Karalis and USA’s Sam Kendricks tried and failed to match him, earning bronze and silver respectively. Which just left the Mondo show.
After some brief hugs with his parents to celebrate gold, Duplantis strode across the track and set to work, first breaking the Olympic record of 6.03m set by Thiago Braz in 2016, though you suspect Braz had mentally released that one already. Kendricks geed up the crowd as Duplantis glided over 6.10m with room to spare.
It moved up to the world record of 6.25m. After two failed attempts, he lay down and stretched out his back, giving his body every possible chance of bending over the bar in his final try.
Duplantis stood at the top of the runway with his pole resting on his shoulder. He took a couple of sharp breaths and muttered “come on” to himself as volleys of “Allez Mondo!” shook the stadium. Then he ran, muscles straining, hair trailing in the wind like Evel Knievel’s cape. He slid his pole into the box and launched into the air in one smooth motion, contorting his body into a perfect right-angle before whipping his arm away from contact. The bar never twitched.
He was celebrating before gravity had thrown him onto the mat. Then he was up, letting off a primal roar before rushing into the arms of his girlfriend, the Swedish model and TikTokker Desire Inglander. Abba’s Dancing Queen blared from the speakers as he embarked on a victory lap.
“I don’t know how to put into words what I’m feeling,” Duplantis said after the bedlam subsided. “I feel so grateful for how tonight played out. I didn’t let myself believe that I was Olympic champion until it was all done. I think it’s been such a fight to show up and to be at our best and do it when it matters.
“I feel so grateful for having this come together, a little bit of luck on our side, and being able to walk away on top. It’s just so special.”
Pole vault is ostensibly a silly endeavour, the only track and field event whose most Googled queries are to ask who invented it and why. But it is also compelling sport and dazzling art in equal measure. Essentially what happened here is that 80,000 people lost their minds as they watched a Swedish man clear the height of a large giraffe with nothing but a stick in his hands.
Duplantis has always had the ingredients, as the son of an American pole-vaulter and a Swedish heptathlete. But ever since he first cleared Renaud Lavillenie’s record of 6.15m in 2020, he has found ways of reaching new, unfathomable heights.
You can take your pick from his list of records and achievements. At 24, he is already a double Olympic champion, and a double world champion too. The top 10 clearances in history are all his. My personal favourite is that he hasn’t won a silver or bronze medal since 2019. This was the apex of five years of unfettered dominance.
That made the expectation enormous, not just to win but to put on a show. In Paris, Duplantis made theatre.
“Pressure is becoming my friend. I think it’s one of those things I’ve learnt can bring out the best in you if you embrace it. I felt like I was really in the zone and just doing great, and I felt that so much in my prelim. And then tonight, I think on my first throw, I felt the weight of, ‘Holy crap, this is the Olympics’.
“It took me a minute to find my groove, but once my coach got me in a better headspace, and we just took it throw by throw, it felt like things were just clicking and that stadium filled with 80,000 people were just bringing out the best in all the athletes. I’m so grateful to embrace that and be part of such a historic night.”
