Duplantis, the pop star ready to save athletics

BarcelonaCentimeter by centimeter, Armand Mondo Duplantis is getting older. This year, the Swedish pole vaulter has already broken his own world record twice, always leaving the impression that it won't be the last. A year ago, Duplantis starred in one of the greatest moments of the Paris Olympic Games. when he broke the world record after he had already secured the gold medal, becoming the first man to retain the Olympic title since Bob Richards (USA) in 1956.

Duplantis seems to practice a different sport. His opponents jump and fly. His rivals seem heavy as they take flight, and he seems to soar with ease. The Swede's mere presence at a major athletics meeting is guaranteed to sell out, with the promise of seeing him soar higher than ever. He broke his last world record last week in Stockholm, in the old stadium that hosted the 1912 Games, where he reached 6.28 m. "I needed to break the record in Sweden, in Stockholm, in front of my Swedes," he said after running around the track shirtless.

And to think that when he debuted, the Swedes didn't trust him. They saw him as not very Swedish. He didn't speak his mother's language well and expressed himself better in English, since he was born and raised in the United States. Specifically in Louisiana, the homeland of Greg, his father, a diver married to Helena, a Swedish heptathlete and volleyball player. Duplantis spends six months in the United States and half in Europe, but the family remains in Louisiana, where a brother plays baseball. But Duplantis had decided to become an Olympian with Sweden and is now more popular than the members of the Swedish royal family, who want to meet him. Everyone wants a photo with him. Mondo, be it admirers, boys or King Carlos Gustau. In 2020 he began a relationship with the model and influencer Swedish Desiré Englander, to whom he always dedicates every record he breaks. When they go on vacation, they paparazzi They follow them.

In Avesta, the town in northern Stockholm where the mother was born, they have installed a replica of a pole vault pit, with a bar that is raised each time the Mondo breaks a new record. When you arrive in the village, you find a giant wooden horse and the bar waiting to be raised again. Duplantis fever is such that the athlete is also successful in music, as in February he released his first song, Bop, along with his friends Emil Berg and Rasmus Wahlberg. In Sweden, the song made it into the country's top 25 most-streamed songs, although Duplantis isn't known as a singer.

He's the athlete of the moment, a man who has broken his own world record 12 times. The first time was in 2020 in Poland, when he reached 6.17 meters. It would be the first of 12 outdoor records, to which must be added the six indoor, indoors, where he has raised the bar from 6.17 to the current 6.27. In total, he has already broken 18 world records, still far from the 35 times achieved by the legendary Sergei Bubka, who achieved 17 outdoors and 18 indoors from 1984 to 1994. Bubka raised the bar from 5.85 to 6.14 and set the trend. He began his career as a Soviet and finished it as a Ukrainian, marking an era. Back then, no one thought that the pole vault would find someone like him. Until the Mondo.

"He's very strong. He has a lot of personality, I think he won't stop. I celebrate for his family, I know them," said Bubka in 2024 when he presented the gold medal to Paris. He did so without euphoria, without conveying emotions, with respect but with a certain coldness. As if he cursed being great and not being able to compete against the Mondo, the son of Greg, the American high jumper who always lost to Bubka. Unlike the Ukrainian, Duplantis is a media star. Bubka grew up under the hammer and sickle, the son of a harsh land like the Donbas. Duplantis is the son of an American and a Swedish mother, grew up on a college campus in Louisiana, and lets himself be loved.

Duplantis has understood how modern sport works. He dominates the scene and isn't like Bubka, who often, after breaking a world record, would try to improve it a few minutes later in the same athletics event. Given that athletes who break world records are paid $100,000, the Swede doesn't want to beat his record twice in the same day. Or beat it by more than a centimeter, since that would mean losing money and making a day of news: he dominates the scene. He uses social media, where he has amassed millions of followers, to reach out to the public. He knows that pole vaulting isn't the most popular sport, so he signs up for adventures like a 100-meter freestyle race against Norwegian Karsten Warholm, world record holder for the 400-meter hurdles. Duplantis won, of course. In fact, his running speed is key to understanding his jumps: he takes more and faster steps than other jumpers before jumping. When he trains, he spends more hours running than actually practicing jumping.

In an athletics field somewhat bereft of personalities like Usain Bolt, Duplantis has become the big draw. In fact, the Jamaican was in Stockholm watching the Swede's latest feat live. "He told me he thought he would break the record and that, therefore, we should celebrate it afterwards with a good party," said Bolt, who, now retired, dedicates himself to travel, advertising, and DJing. "I like his character; he's confident in himself. I think he can achieve a third Olympic gold medal," added the Caribbean native, who achieved that feat in the 100 meters: three Olympic golds in a row. No one has ever done it in the pole vault, but Duplantis wants to achieve it in 2028 in Los Angeles, when he will be 28 years old. "I think I can do it," he often says. For the moment, it seems he has only one rival: himself. Mondo must He has achieved the 10 highest jumps in the history of the sport by himself, surpassing Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie's 6.16m in 2014. He has been undefeated for two years. And his challenge is to reach Los Angeles the same way, but with more world records along the way. Always inch by inch. Step by step. Becoming rich and even more famous.