Armand Duplantis facts for kids

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Armand Duplantis

Duplantis jumps 6.00 metres in pole vault at Stockholm Stadium on 24 August 2019.
Personal information
Birth name	Armand Gustav Duplantis
Nickname(s)	Mondo Duplantis
Nationality	Swedish American
Born	(1999-11-10) 10 November 1999 (age 24) Lafayette, Louisiana, U.S.
Education	Louisiana State University
Height	1.81 m
Weight	79 kg
Sport
Country	Sweden
Sport	Athletics
Event(s)	Pole vault
Club	Upsala IF
Coached by	Greg & Helena Duplantis
Achievements and titles
Highest world ranking	1st (2023)
Personal best(s)	6.25 m WR (Paris 2024)
Medal record Men’s athletics Representing  Sweden Olympic Games Gold 2020 Tokyo Pole vault Gold 2024 Paris Pole vault World Championships Gold 2022 Eugene Pole vault Gold 2023 Budapest Pole vault Silver 2019 Doha Pole vault World Indoor Championships Gold 2022 Belgrade Pole vault Gold 2024 Glasgow Pole vault Diamond League Gold 2021 Pole vault Gold 2022 Pole vault Gold 2023 Pole vault European Championships Gold 2018 Berlin Pole vault Gold 2022 Munich Pole vault Gold 2024 Rome Pole vault European Indoor Championships Gold 2021 Toruń Pole vault World Junior Championships Gold 2018 Tampere Pole vault Bronze 2016 Bydgoszcz Pole vault European Junior Championships Gold 2017 Grosseto Pole vault World Youth Championships Gold 2015 Cali Pole vault

Armand Gustav "Mondo" Duplantis (born 10 November 1999) is a Swedish-American pole vaulter, the current world outdoor and indoor record holder (6.25 metres or 20 feet 6 inches, and 6.22 metres or 20 feet 5 inches, respectively), two-time Olympic (2020 and 2024) champion, two-time World outdoor (2022 and 2023) and two-time indoor champion, the current European champion, and the current Diamond League champion. He won the silver medal at the 2019 World Championships. Duplantis is a three-time European champion from 2018, when he set current world under-20 record, and from 2022 and 2024, he is 2022 World Indoor Championship and 2021 European Indoor Championship gold medalist. He is widely considered the greatest pole vaulter of all time.

Duplantis won titles as a 15-year-old at the 2015 World Youth Championships. A year later, he placed third at the World U20 Championships. In 2017, he took the European U20 title, and the following year, World U20 title. Duplantis is also a three-time Diamond League champion.

Both European and World Athletics Male Rising Star of the Year in 2018, two years later he was voted World Male Athlete of the Year. At the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Duplantis won his first Olympic Gold Medal. For his 2022 season, which saw him breaking the world records three times, becoming World outdoor and indoor champion, European and Diamond League champion, and clearing six-metre-plus 22 times, Duplantis was crowned both European and World Male Athlete of the Year. As of February 2023, he has cleared six metres or higher 60 times, the most of any athlete in history.

At various points in his career, Duplantis has cleared the nine highest heights of all time. After Renaud Lavillenie cleared 6.16 m (20 ft 2+1/2 in) in 2014, Duplantis has cleared every height from 6.17 m to his current world record of 6.25 m, which he achieved at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris. Duplantis won the gold medal with a jump of 6.00 m and broke the world record with a jump of 6.25 m in the same final, on his final attempt at that height.

Duplantis is one of only eleven athletes (along with Valerie Adams, Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Jacques Freitag, Yelena Isinbayeva, Kirani James, Faith Kipyegon, Jana Pittman, Dani Samuels, and David Storl) to win world championships at the youth, junior, and senior level of an athletic event.

Early life and career

Duplantis was born into an athletic family in Lafayette, Louisiana. His American father, Greg Duplantis, 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.

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. Duplantis eventually chose to represent the Swedish Olympic team instead of the US after an intervention from their Olympic youth coach, who offered his father a job as the national team pole vault coach. The decision was instrumental in his choice to develop in the sport.

At the 2018 European Athletics Championships in Berlin, 18-year-old Duplantis won his first major senior title.

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 felt that he understood faster and native 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. Previously, Duplantis had lamented that improving his Swedish had 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 the Tokyo Olympics, he stated that his older brother having great experiences representing Sweden at a youth level and his love for Sweden as a child made the decision to play for Sweden 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. The municipality of Avesta, where Duplantis's mother was raised, erected 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.

2015: U18 world champion

His freshman year at Lafayette High School in 2015, 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 4+1⁄2 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 1+1⁄2 in) vault only one week later.

2017: U20 world record and U20 European title

On 11 February 2017, at the Millrose Games, Duplantis jumped 5.75 m (18 ft 10+1⁄2 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's mark as the American junior record.

2018: U20 World champion, first European title and first jump over 6.00 m

Duplantis began his 2018 season by improving upon the world indoor junior record by jumping 5.83 m (19 ft 1+1⁄2 in) at the Pole Vault Summit in Reno, Nevada. He later bettered his indoor record with 5.88 m (19 ft 3+1⁄2 in) and reached 6.05 m (19 ft 10 in) at the 2018 European Athletics Championships. The 6.05 m vault ranked him tied as the fifth-best pole vaulter in history and tied for the second-best outdoors.

2019: World championship silver medallist

Duplantis jumps 6.0 metres at Stockholm Stadium on 24 August 2019.

Duplantis placed second at the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Doha, Qatar, clearing 5.97 m (19 ft 7 in) on his third attempt.

2020: First world record

Duplantis at the 2020 BAUHAUS-galan meeting in Stockholm

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 3+1⁄2 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 3+1⁄2 in). A few days later, on 23 February, he won the All Star Perche in Clermont-Ferrand by clearing 6.01 m (19 ft 8+1⁄2 in) in his last indoor competition for the season, which ended with new unsuccessful attempts at 6.19 m (20 ft 3+1⁄2 in). On 14 July, he received a scholarship from Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden.

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 1+1⁄2 in), with a second-attempt clearance of 6.15 m (20 ft 2 in). Note that World Athletics does not recognize the indoor and outdoor pole vault as separate events; Duplantis already held the world record at 6.18 m (20 ft 3+1⁄2 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: Olympic title in Tokyo and European indoor title

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 3+1⁄2 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: New world records, first world titles and second European title

On 7 March, he beat his own world record by jumping 6.19 m (20 ft 3+1⁄2 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 the 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 2+1⁄2 in).

On 24 July, he broke his own world record yet again, at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon by recording a jump of 6.21 m (20 ft 4+1⁄2 in).

At the 2022 European Championships held in Munich, he won gold and broke the championship record with a jump of 6.06 m (19 ft 10+1⁄2 in).

Duplantis capped his season in September by clearing 6.07 m (19 ft 11 in) at the Zürich Diamond League final to retain the Diamond Trophy.

2023: Sixth and seventh world records

Duplantis got his 2023 campaign off to strong start at the Mondo Classic in Uppsala, the meet named after his nickname. His winning height of 6.10 m (20 ft 0 in) represented not only his best ever season opener but also the highest season-opening performance of any pole vaulter in history. He also broke Bubka's record of 11 vaults of 6.10 m or higher (including indoors and outdoors). On 25 February at the All Star Perche indoor meeting in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Duplantis broke the world record again, clearing 6.22 m (20 ft 5 in) to increase the number of his career six-metre-plus jumps to 60. On 17 September, pending confirmation, he broke his own world record when he cleared 6.23 m (20 ft 5 1/4 in) at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon.

2024: New titles of World Indoor Champion, European Champion and double Olympic Champion

At the 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, in March 2024, Duplantis made a vault of 6.05 m, winning the gold medal.

On 20 April 2024, at the Xiamen Diamond League meeting in Xiamen, China, the first stage of the 2024 Diamond League, Duplantis improved his world record by one centimeter, clearing 6.24 m on his first attempt.

On 12 June 2024, he won the 2024 European Championships in Rome, being the only competitor to clear the six-meter mark. Assured of the title, he set a new European Championships record of 6.10 meters on his first attempt before failing in his three attempts to break the world record.

On 5 August 2024, at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Duplantis retained his Olympic title from 2020. He won with a jump of 6.00 m, after Sam Kendricks failed to clear higher than 5.95 m. He then jumped 6.10 m to break the Olympic record set by Thiago Braz at the 2016 Olympics and finally jumped 6.25 m, on his third attempt at that height, setting a new world record. In an interesting repeat of the 2024 European Championships, Duplantis was the only competitor to clear 6 m, cleared both 6.00 m and 6.10 m on his first try and again attempted to break his own world record of 6.24 m. He both created a world record and broke his own Olympic record, set 20 minutes earlier.

Achievements

Duplantis celebrating his 6.0 m jump in pole vault on 24 August 2019 in Stockholm

Information from World Athletics profile.

International competitions

Representing  Sweden

Year	Competition	Venue	Position	Result	Notes
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 i
	World U20 Championships	Tampere, Finland	1st	5.82 m	CR
	European Championships	Berlin, Germany	1st	6.05 m	WU20R
2019	World Championships	Doha, Qatar	2nd	5.97 m
2021	European Indoor Championships	Torun, Poland	1st	6.05 m i	CR
	Olympic Games	Tokyo, Japan	1st	6.02 m
2022	World Indoor Championships	Belgrade, Serbia	1st	6.20 m i	WR
	World Championships	Eugene, USA	1st	6.21 m	WR
	European Championships	Munich, Germany	1st	6.06 m	CR
2023	World Championships	Budapest, Hungary	1st	6.10 m
2024	World Indoor Championships	Glasgow, United Kingdom	1st	6.05 m i
	European Championships	Rome, Italy	1st	6.10 m	CR
	Olympic Games	Paris, France	1st	6.25 m	WR

Source:

Circuit wins and titles

• Diamond League pole vault champion: 2021, 2022, 2023
  • 2018 (1): Stockholm
  • 2019 (1): Stanford
  • 2020 (7): Oslo, Monaco, Stockholm (WL MR), Lausanne (WL DLR), Brussels (MR), Rome (WL DLR NR), Doha (=MR)
  • 2021 (5): Oslo (MR), Stockholm (MR), Paris (MR), Brussels (MR), Zürich (MR)
  • 2022 (7): Doha, Eugene, Oslo (WL MR), Stockholm (DLR), Chorzów (MR), Lausanne (MR), Zürich (MR)
  • 2023 (6): Oslo, Stockholm, Chorzów, Zürich, Brussels (MR), Eugene (WR)
  • 2024 (2): Xiamen (WR), Shanghai

Progression and world records

Key:       Lifetime best;   Season's best,   Other world records

Source:

Honours

• Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year: 2024 Nominee

See also

In Spanish: Armand Duplantis para niños