With the World Indoor Championships round the corner, 22-year-old pole vaulter Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis rewrote his own world record by clearing 6.19 metres at the world tour silver event in Belgrade.
When pole vault great Sergey Bubka became the first to jump six metres in 1985, he shattered the myth of it being an unattainable height. Bubka, arguably the greatest-ever pole vaulter, finished at 6.15 metres, a mark that stood for two decades before France’s Renaud Lavillenie cleared 6.16 metres.
However, over the past two years, American-born Swedish athlete Duplantis has bettered that mark three times. With age on his side, Duplantis is destined to rule the event as long as Bubka did, if not longer, and literally raise the bar to unprecedented heights.
Why was 6.19m special?
In February 2020, Duplantis, seen as the heir apparent to Bubka since winning the World Youth Championships at the age of 15, broke the world record twice in the span of a week. On February 8, he bettered Frenchman Lavillenie’s record with 6.17m in Poland. Just a week later in Glasgow, he bettered the mark by one centimetre. However, what seemed like quick progression hit a hurdle with Duplantis attempting 6.19 metres multiple times without success. At the Tokyo Olympics, Duplantis, after securing gold at 6.02 metres, had unsuccessfully tried to clear 6.19 metres.
On March 7, he nearly missed out again. He failed in his first two attempts at 6.19 before touching the bar with his knees but not knocking it off.
“I think I’ve tried 6.19m 50 times,” said Duplantis. “It’s been a long time coming. I’ve never had a height that has given me that much trouble, so it’s a very good feeling. It was really hard fought over these past two years. I’m really happy.”
How does Duplantis compare with Bubka?
Bubka represented the Soviet Union and then Ukraine when he broke the world record in men’s pole vault 35 times – 17 outdoor and 18 indoor. It is unlikely Duplantis’ name will be in the record books as many times as Bubka’s because the human threshold required to break records gets only greater with each rewriting of a mark. Moreover, since the change of the millennium, indoor and outdoor records are no longer considered separate marks in the record books. Bubka broke the world record (5.85 metres) for the first time in 1984 at Bratislava and a year later, did what was till then considered beyond humans – 6 metres in Paris.
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“Six metres was mission impossible, no one believed this could happen,” Bubka told World Athletics on the 35th anniversary of the feat. “The older generation 100 percent didn’t believe someone could jump six metres in that period.”
For all his dominance, Bubka won only one Olympic gold in 1988. He could not travel to the previous edition of the Games in Los Angeles because of the Soviet boycott. He, however, won six consecutive world championship titles.
Duplantis is only getting started. He finished runner-up at the 2019 World Championships but since then, has gone from strength to strength by not only breaking the world record three times but also winning the Olympic gold.
Are the techniques of Duplantis and Bubka different?
Bubka used a technique named after his coach Vitaly Petrov which is a modified version of what Sweden’s Kjell Isaksson made famous. A key aspect of the Petrov technique is using the energy to push the body in one swift and perpendicular motion towards the bar. The trailing leg, which needs to swing in one upward motion, is key to the success of this technique.
Duplantis, like Lavillenie, has used the Tuck and Shoot style. In this method, after take-off the vaulter brings the knees close to the chest just before rock-back (when the shoulders drop below the extended body). With the body coiled, the vaulter pushes upwards and turns as the pole recoils. Duplantis, in an interview to the Diamond League YouTube channel, recalled how he grew up watching Lavillenie’s jumping videos.
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Lavillenie, the 2012 London Olympics Champion, at 5’10” is not the tallest athlete. Duplantis, who was on the shorter side till a growth spurt in his late teens, looked for clues to maximise his jump by studying the Frenchman’s technique.
Duplantis is known to improvise. Sam Kendricks, the 2017 pole vault world champion, told olympics.com that Duplantis can copy techniques of rivals easily. “He can do my technique if I ask him. He can do Renaud’s (Lavillenie). He can do it all. But in competition, he does it how he wants to do it, not copying anyone else.”
Why did Duplantis and Bubka before him improve records by a centimetre each time?
Moments after rewriting his own world record with a leap of 6.19 metres, Duplantis said, “I don’t think this is the highest I’m ever going to jump”. He was probably talking about bettering the mark centimetre by centimetre. Two years ago, he improved the mark from 6.17 metres to 6.18 metres and received a bonus of $30,000. The incremental improvements Duplantis has made and will make is because pole vault allows participants to target a very specific height. So, the bar can next be set at 6.20 metres and if Duplantis clears it, he will have another world record and a big cheque. He could be capable of clearing 6.22 metres, but why do it at one go when each centimetre comes with a windfall?
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Duplantis is not the first to break the world record multiple times. Between 1991 and 1993 when Bubka rewrote the record 14 times, each improvement just a centimetre over the previous mark. Bubka was offered a world record bonus by Nike and was simply doing the smart thing. He finished at 6.15m in 1993.
How much higher can Duplantis go?
Duplantis comes from a sporting family. His father Greg was a pole-vaulter with a personal best of 5.80m and competed against the likes of Bubka. His mother Helena used to be a Swedish heptathlete. He started vaulting at the age of four on a runway in the backyard of his family home in Lafayette (Louisiana) in the USA. He was inspired by his eldest brother Andreas to take up the sport. When he turned 12, he was jumping 3.97 metres, a world-leading height for that age, and had the best jumps in the world from age 7 to age 12. Currently, the gap between him and the rest is pretty wide. In 2021, Duplantis’ best was 6.10m. USA’s Christopher Nielsen was the next best at 5.97 metres. Even if there are no rivals to push him, Duplantis is expected to set new standards in pole vault, just like Bubka in a previous era.
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