We are sitting in a swish Parisian hotel, Mondo Duplantis and I, but his mind is elsewhere. It’s on the runway. Then high in the sky. Bending, arching and twisting over another impossible peak, six metres up and the rest. At the precise point where he knows he has shattered the world record again.
So what are those milliseconds like? “Every one brings a different type of emotion,” he replies. “But in some way, it’s the same. It’s a kind of hysteria.”
Duplantis pauses. And then he’s back where elevation meets ecstasy and then gravity. “You are freaking out inside, because it doesn’t feel real,” he says. “When I’m on the way down, I can see that the bar is going to stay there. But it almost feels fake.
“You go into this almost cloud-nine type feeling, the dopamine kick or whatever it is, and suddenly you’re on a different planet. It almost feels completely out of this world.”
Anyone who has watched Duplantis vault this year has had a similarly ethereal experience. His record? Fifteen competitions, 15 wins. Gold medals in the world indoor championships, European championships, and the Olympic Games. And, incredibly, three more world records.
Every athlete chases perfection. But in 2024, the Swede achieved it.
The second world record was surely his Mona Lisa. It came on his final jump on a broiling evening at the Games in Paris. By then track was done for the night, and so it was just Duplantis, the bar at 6.25m, and 77,000 giddy fans in the Stade de France creating a wall of sound to rival anything by Phil Spector.
Duplantis had visualised the moment 1,000 times, from the moment he began pole vaulting in the back yard as a tiny kid (it helps when your dad is a retired elite vaulter and your mum is a former heptathlete). And in a rush of glorious Technicolor: it all came true.
We live in a world where track and field has been pushed to the margins, but on that wild night the daredevil gatecrashed into the mainstream.
After Paris, Duplantis gained a million followers on Instagram. And he soon made more headlines by beating the 400m hurdles record holder, Karsten Warholm, in a much‑hyped 100m exhibition race. His time of 10.37sec on a cold night wasn’t too shabby, either. For good measure, he was recently named European athlete of the year and, at a glitzy ceremony in Monaco on Sunday, World Athletics’ field athlete of the year. Never mind field, he’d be my athlete of the year, full stop.
The intriguing question is what happens next. Duplantis has everything: talent, Gen Z personality (his dad describes him as a “little reckless” and remembers him jumping off roofs on his skateboard) and even a fiance who is a successful model and influencer.
But everything is different in an Olympic year. When Michael Johnson launches his $12m (£9.4m) Grand Slam Track league next year, for instance, it won’t include field events. “I think I can save track,” Johnson says. “I don’t think I can save track and field.”
Yet something else Duplantis told me about the pole vault serves as a punchy rejoinder. “I think it is the most technical, the most beautiful and most exotic event,” he said. “There’s a very beautiful complexity to it.”
I couldn’t agree more. The fact that he is able to leap over 6.26m, nearly the height of one and a half London doubledecker buses squashed on top of each other, with just a long pole and a metal box is staggering. I just wish TV could capture the white-knuckle ride up close.
I say this with first-hand experience. At the 2016 world indoor championships, the pole vault was held in front of 7,000 people in a gym, where some of us were fortunate enough to be next to the action. It was like watching TV in 4K for the first time.
Maybe it’s time for TV directors to up their game. One idea: use drones with HD cameras to better capture the speed, the athleticism, even the trash talk. Everything that makes the sport great.
Meanwhile, what Duplantis told me about his early years could also be pinned on the wall of every pushy parent. For while he broke his first world record at seven, clearing 2.33m, he was never forced to specialise early.
“My parents did build the whole setup in the backyard, so we were forced to try it at least,” he told me. “But we did a lot of sports until I was about 15. I played baseball just as much as pole vault. Soccer, too.
But I always had a natural drive. I wanted to be the best and I loved the pole vault. My middle brother Antoine never liked it so he just played baseball. And my parents were like: ‘That’s fine.’”
Yet as the greatest year of his career comes to an end, Duplantis remains determined to push into new frontiers, including one day clearing 6.30m. “As the years go on, it gets harder. You’re not going to have these huge personal bests and breakthroughs that you had when you were younger.
“But, in some ways, it gets more motivating. Trying to improve. Staying on the right path. And ultimately it’s still the same. It’s always a competition within yourself. Me against the bar, just as it was when I was younger.”
And if history tells us anything, betting against Duplantis never works out well.
