Duplantis breaks pole vault record for 15th time

Sweden’s Armand Duplantis broke his own pole vault world record for the 15th time on Thursday with a jump of 6.31 metres.

The two-time Olympic gold champion cleared the height at the IFU Arena in Uppsala in the Mondo Classic – an indoor pole vault-only event in Sweden named after him.

After clearing 5.65m, 5.90m and then 6.08m, all on his first attempts, the 26-year-old asked for the bar to be lifted 23cm to a world-record height and then promptly soared over.

It was the second time Duplantis has broken the world record in Sweden. He cleared 6.28m in Stockholm last June, one of four world-record leaps in 2025.

“I am so proud to have been able to do this in front of you,” Duplantis said.

“I jump for myself, I jump for my family, but I also jump for you, for Sweden, and for everyone who supports me.”

Duplantis has increased the world record by the minimum one-centimetre margin on all 15 occasions he has broken it.

Duplantis, widely known by his nickname ‘Mondo’, has already won every major gold available to him, and became the first man in 68 years to retain the Olympic pole vault title at Paris 2024.

The US-born Swede, who chose to represent his mother’s homeland, has not lost a major final since the World Athletics Championship in Doha in 2019, where as a teenager he missed out to American Sam Kendricks on countback.

World record talk has largely replaced any discussion of the destination of men’s pole vault gold medals since he took the record off Lavillenie in February 2020.

How has he done it? A potent combination of lightning runway speed, technical precision in the take-off, explosive power and the bravery to embrace it as he travels far beyond the average height of a giraffe (5.5m).

It is his sprinting prowess in particular that his rivals pinpoint as a defining factor, with the higher approach speed generating greater kinetic energy and creating the foundation for greater heights.

That is something he has enhanced through specially developed sprinting spikes which he wears for his world record attempts, which feature an unusual hooked spike in the forefoot.

His incremental centimetre-by-centimetre approach to improving the world record is by no means revolutionary; since Sergey Bubka became the first person to clear six metres 40 years ago, the record has been nudged no more than two centimetres higher at a time.

It helped that Duplantis grew up with a pole vault pit in the back garden of his childhood home in Louisiana, with his father a former elite competitor in the discipline.