Armand Duplantis facts for kids
Duplantis jumps 6.00 metres in pole at Stockholm Stadium on 24 August 2019.
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| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Birth name | Armand Gustav Duplantis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nickname(s) | Mondo Duplantis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality |
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| Born | 10 November 1999 Lafayette, Louisiana, U.S. |
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| Height | 1.81 m | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 79 kg | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Country | Sweden | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Athletics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Event(s) | Pole vault | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Upsala IF | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Coached by | Greg Duplantis & Helena Duplantis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Achievements and titles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal best(s) | Indoor: 6.20 m WR (Belgrade 2022) Outdoor: 6.21 m NR WR (Eugene 2022) |
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Medal record
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Armand Gustav "Mondo" Duplantis (born 10 November 1999) is an American-born Swedish pole vaulter and the current world record holder with a height of 6.21 meters (20 ft 41⁄2 in) and the current Olympic champion and World champion. Duplantis won gold as a 15-year-old in the boys' pole vault at the 2015 World Youth Championships and holds a number of age group world bests. He won the gold medal at the 2018 European Championships with a height of 6.05 meters (19 ft 10 in) (a new under-20s world record), and the silver medal at the 2019 World Championships. Duplantis has also won the 2021 Diamond League and the 2021 European Indoor Championships, setting Championship Bests at both. In 2021, he won the gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. In 2022, he became world champion at the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Championships, and later also world champion at the 2022 World Athletics Championship.
In 2020, Duplantis was voted World Athletics Male Athlete of the Year.
Contents
Life and career
Duplantis was born into an athletic family; his American father, Greg Duplantis, who is of Cajun and Finnish descents, is a former pole vaulter with a personal best of 5.80 m (19 ft 1⁄2 in), while his Swedish mother Helena (née Hedlund) is a former heptathlete and volleyball player. His two older brothers, Andreas and Antoine, and his younger sister, Johanna, also took up sports; Andreas represented Sweden as a pole vaulter at the 2009 World Youth Championships and 2012 World Junior Championships, while Antoine dropped pole vault for baseball in high school before heading to Louisiana State University where he became the team's career hits leader in 2019.
While growing up in an English-speaking household, Duplantis learned adequate Swedish as his second language. Encouraged by his mother, Duplantis took extensive lessons over Skype in order to improve his fluency and by 2020 he felt that he understood native, and faster, speech much better than he had done in the past. His mother claimed at the same time that while Duplantis felt shy about speaking Swedish in public, he was very happy to do so in private, where there was less pressure. By 2021, after winning the Olympic gold, his knowledge of the language had improved to the point that he felt comfortable doing full Swedish-speaking interviews. In the past, Duplantis has lamented that improving his Swedish has been somewhat hampered by the high level of English skills in Sweden, which has led to native speakers preferring to speak English when talking with him.
After winning the Jerringpriset as the most popular athlete in Sweden in 2020, Duplantis expressed relief that the Swedish public had accepted and embraced him. During said Olympics, Duplantis also stated that his older brother having great experiences representing Sweden at a youth level and his love for Sweden as a child made his choice very easy but that he also feels a strong bond to Lafayette. Duplantis usually divides his year between winters in Louisiana and summers in Uppsala in Sweden, adapted for when the two climates offer the best possibilities for training. With Duplantis' mother Helena being raised in Avesta, the municipality raised a pole vault bar beside the gigantic Dala horse monument to showcase the height of his world record, something that made Duplantis "break down in tears" over the significance of what he had accomplished when he heard about it.
Duplantis first tried pole vaulting as a three-year-old at the family's home in Lafayette, Louisiana, and took to the event rapidly; he set his first age group world best at age seven, and his jump of 3.86 m (12 ft 8 in) as a 10-year-old surpassed the previous world bests for ages 11 and 12 as well. As of July 2015[update], he holds the world best in all age groups from age seven to age 12; he held the age 13 record until it was broken in May 2015.
2015
In 2015, his freshman year at Lafayette High School, Duplantis set national freshman records both indoors and outdoors and was named Gatorade Louisiana Boys Track & Field Athlete of the Year. As a citizen of both the United States and Sweden, Duplantis could have chosen to vault for either country internationally; in June 2015 it was announced that he had selected Sweden. Duplantis represented Sweden for the first time at the 2015 World Youth Championships in Cali, Colombia; he won gold on countback with a first-attempt clearance of 5.30 m (17 ft 41⁄2 in), improving his personal best by two centimeters and setting a new championship record.
2016
Duplantis cleared 5.49 m (18 ft 0 in) at a high school meet in Baton Rouge on 6 February 2016, setting a new age-16 world best, world indoor youth best and national high school indoor record; he was the first high school athlete to vault 18 feet indoors. Emmanouil Karalis of Greece, the same age as Duplantis, broke his world marks with a 5.53 m (18 ft 11⁄2 in) vault only one week later.
2017
On 11 February 2017, at the Millrose Games, Duplantis jumped 5.75 m (18 ft 101⁄2 in) to set the World Indoor Junior Record. That mark was ratified by IAAF. A month later he improved to 5.82 m (19 ft 1 in) in the same facility at the New Balance National Scholastic Championships. That mark was not ratified due to incorrect peg lengths being used. On 1 April 2017, Duplantis jumped 5.90 m at the Nike Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays, improving his personal record and setting a new World Junior Record. The jump also became a Swedish senior record by . While the IAAF recognized the record with Duplantis representing Sweden, on 2 December 2017, USATF also ratified Duplantis' mark as the American Junior record.
2018
Duplantis began his 2018 season by improving upon the World Indoor Junior Record by jumping 5.83 m (19 ft 11⁄2 in) at the Pole Vault Summit in Reno, Nevada. He later improved his indoor record to 5.88 m (19 ft 31⁄2 in) and reached 6.05 m (19 ft 10 in) at the 2018 European Athletics Championships. The 6.05 m (19 ft 10 in) vault ranked him tied as the fifth-best pole vaulter in history and tied for the second-best outdoors.
2019
Duplantis placed 2nd at the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Doha, Qatar, clearing 5.97 m (19 ft 7 in) on his third attempt.
2020
On 4 February, Duplantis cleared 6.00 m (19 ft 8 in) indoors at his first competition of the season. He followed that up with three attempts at a new world record of 6.17 m (20 ft 3 in). On his second attempt, he cleared the bar but brushed it off with his arm on the way back down.
On 8 February, Duplantis broke Renaud Lavillenie's almost-six-year-old world record with a jump of 6.17 m (20 ft 3 in) in Toruń, Poland. A week later, on 15 February in Glasgow, he increased the record by another centimetre to 6.18 m (20 ft 31⁄2 in).
On 19 February, Duplantis won the Meeting Hauts de France Pas de Calais by clearing 6.07 m (19 ft 11 in), after which he made three unsuccessful attempts at the new world record height of 6.19 m (20 ft 31⁄2 in). A few days later, on 23 February, Duplantis won the All Star Perche in Clermont-Ferrand by clearing 6.01 m (19 ft 81⁄2 in) in his last indoor competition for the season, which ended with new unsuccessful attempts at 6.19 m (20 ft 31⁄2 in). On 14 July, he received a scholarship from Swedish Crown Princess Victoria.
On 17 September at the Rome Golden Gala Pietro Mennea Diamond League, Duplantis broke Sergey Bubka's outdoor world best of 6.14 m (20 ft 11⁄2 in), with a second-attempt clearance of 6.15 m (20 ft 2 in). Note that the IAAF does not recognize the indoor and outdoor pole vault as separate events; Duplantis already held the world record at 6.18 m (20 ft 31⁄2 in) from his indoor clearance in February 2020.
On 1 December, he was awarded the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal for "the most significant Swedish sports achievement of the year".
2021
On 6 March, Duplantis competed at the 2021 European Indoor Championships. He was the overwhelming favourite to win the title after the late withdrawal of Renaud Lavillenie with injury. Duplantis was still tested by Piotr Lisek and Lavillenie's younger brother Valentin, who went on to claim bronze and silver respectively — the latter with a personal best. Duplantis however set a new championship record of 6.05 m (19 ft 10 in) before making three unsuccessful attempts at 6.19 m (20 ft 31⁄2 in), his second narrowly missing the world record.
At the one-year delayed 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Duplantis won a gold medal when he cleared a height of 6.02 m (19 ft 9 in) on his first effort, and afterwards got very close to beating his own world record. Silver medalist Chris Nilsen was full of praise for the winner. He compared the competition against Duplantis that evening as being a regular footballer "trying to emulate Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo" and that his superiority over the world's best pole vaulters was "impressive and ridiculous".
2022
On 7 March, he beat his own world record by jumping 6.19 m (20 ft 31⁄2 in) at the Belgrade Indoor Meeting. Two weeks later, at the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Belgrade, he won the gold medal. At the same time, he broke his world record yet again, by jumping 6.20 m (20 ft 4 in).
On 30 June at BAUHAUS-galan, Duplantis broke his own outdoor world best of 6.15 m (20 ft 2 in) set in 2020, by jumping 6.16 m (20 ft 21⁄2 in).
On 24 July he broke his own world record yet again, at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene by recording a jump of 6.21 m (20 ft 41⁄2 in).
At the 2022 European Championships he won gold and broke the championship record with a jump of 6.06 m (19 ft 101⁄2 in).
Competition records
| Year | Competition | Venue | Position | Notes |
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| 2015 | World U18 Championships | Cali, Colombia | 1st | 5.30 m CR |
| 2016 | World U20 Championships | Bydgoszcz, Poland | 3rd | 5.45 m |
| 2017 | European U20 Championships | Grosseto, Italy | 1st | 5.65 m CR |
| World Championships | London, United Kingdom | 9th | 5.50 m | |
| 2018 | World Indoor Championships | Birmingham, United Kingdom | 8th | 5.70 m |
| World U20 Championships | Tampere, Finland | 1st | 5.82 m CR | |
| European Championships | Berlin, Germany | 6.05 m WU20R | ||
| 2019 | Southeastern Conference Track and Field Championships | Fayetteville, Arkansas | 6.00 m (NCAA record) | |
| World Championships | Doha, Qatar | 2nd | 5.97 m | |
| 2020 | World Athletics Indoor Tour | Torun, Poland | 1st | 6.17 m WR |
| World Athletics Indoor Tour | Glasgow, Scotland | 6.18 m WR | ||
| Diamond League | Rome, Italy | 6.15 m WB | ||
| 2021 | European Indoor Championships | Torun, Poland | 1st | 6.05 m CR |
| Olympic Games | Tokyo, Japan | 1st | 6.02 m | |
| 2022 | Belgrade Indoor Meeting | Belgrade, Serbia | 1st | 6.19 m WR |
| World Indoor Championships | Belgrade, Serbia | 1st | 6.20 m WR | |
| BAUHAUS-galan | Stockholm, Sweden | 1st | 6.16 m WB | |
| World Championships | Oregon, USA | 1st | 6.21 m WR | |
| European Championships | Munich, Germany | 1st | 6.06 m CR |
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Circuit wins and titles
