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Armand Duplantis has broken 11 world records in the pole vault - AP/David J. Phillip
“I’m not a hater,” Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis says, as soon as the subject of Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track (GST) comes up. Although Johnson was criticised for excluding field events from his new athletics league, pole vaulter Duplantis does not seem remotely riled up: “I’m not outraged or anything. I think I’m quite indifferent about the whole thing, honestly.”
The new league aims to bring top athletes together to compete in track events for big prize money. As the name suggests, Johnson is aiming to create standout points in the athletics calendar away from Olympics, in the same way as the grand slams dominate tennis every year.
The first edition of GST happened last month and grabbed headlines when winners Gabby Thomas and Briton Matthew Hudson-Smith were among those to take home checks for $100,000 (£77,000). It was far from a perfect debut though, as attendance at the stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, was poor.
Duplantis was watching from home and struck by the “dead time” between races – a spot usually filled by field events. He commends Johnson for trying something different, though, as Duplantis himself created a pole vault-only event, the Mondo Classic, to boost his discipline too. But he is not convinced that Johnson’s league will ever have a huge impact, and he points to LIV Golf as a case in point.
“I don’t think that it’s going to be the main pinnacle of what track is – I don’t think it ever will be,” Duplantis says. “There’s a certain type of history or tradition that’s required for sports to last. I’m a golf person, I’ve watched some LIV events and it doesn’t matter, you can pay somebody $100 million for a golf tournament and people won’t be as tuned in as they will be for the Masters. Nothing will ever beat the Masters, ever. It’s just not possible. I think that’s why I don’t think GST will ever beat a World Championships or an Olympics. It’s never going to be that level. It’s not just about money. Anyway, that’s my two cents.”
Duplantis’s two cents are worth a lot, considering he is one of athletics’ most prominent stars. At just 25 years of age, he is already a two-time Olympic champion. Last year the Swede recorded one of the most flawless seasons in sport. He won 15 of 15 meets he competed at, including world indoor, European and Olympic gold.
He broke the world record three times, the most spectacular of those coming at the Olympic final in front of 80,000 people at the Stade de France, which increased his social media reach to one million Instagram followers. He is arguably the most dominant athlete on the planet.
Duplantis winning Laureus’s Sportsman of the Year award this past week – becoming the first man in track and field to do so since Usain Bolt eight years ago – is a measure of his impact: “So many things have to add up in the right way for me to get an award like this, so it’s a very once-in-a-lifetime thing. It’s a big win for the pole-vaulting community.”
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Duplantis (left) and his girlfriend Desire Inglander arrive at the Laureus World Sport Awards earlier this month
Still, athletics remains in constant debate about how to regain its foothold as a must-watch sport. Johnson’s GST intends to create rivalries and characters that can transcend the sport outside of Olympic years, rather than focusing on race times.
Duplantis recognises that his record-chasing career is, in some ways, the complete antithesis to that. His winning streak stretches back 27 competitions, through to August 2023. His only real rival is the bar – and he has broken the world record 11 times since he achieved his first back in February 2020: “Everyone in the stadium is wanting me to break the world record and almost expecting me to do it.”
He is keenly aware of the pressure, but equally does not appear burdened by it. Duplantis is a showman on the track, effusively and wildly celebrating after reaching each of his mind-bending new heights. In person, he wears a more contained confidence, but is surprisingly softly spoken with his southern American lilt – a nod to his upbringing in Louisiana, rather than his Swedish roots.
His unprecedented pole-vault dominance means he has found savvy ways to keep things interesting. When he breaks the world record, which currently stands at a whopping 6.27 metres, he does so by 1cm increments, pocketing a $100,000 bonus from World Athletics each time.
One cannot exactly blame the man for wanting to maximise profits alongside the athletic achievement, especially as those two things do not always go hand-in-hand in the sport, but some have branded the practice as cynical and crude. Why will he not just push himself to his absolute limit each time?
“It’s a reasonable question,” he says, with a wry smile. “I think one misconception about it is that people think I secretly jump these 6.30m or 6.40m bars in practice and then go to the meet just milking this world-record thing. I wish it was as easy as that. I jump 15cm lower in training than I do in competitions because you don’t have the same energy, speed, adrenaline. So they are new heights for me – I’m not bulls---ting.
“I’m not going to lie to you, I do the one centimetre each time because there are benefits to it – of course financially but then also because whenever I go to a track meet, people want to see something that’s never been done before. Even if it is by a not-so-big margin, it’s still uncharted territory.”
He adds: “I want to make sure I really maximise [the world record] in my career. I still have more in me, I can break a few more records along the way just for… just for the s--- of it, I guess, because I can. So it’s kind of what you think, but it’s not all the way what you think. I know I am milking it, but it’s still hard, if that makes sense?”
Breaking a world record could get slightly old when you have done it nearly a dozen times. But Duplantis’s eyes get all starry when he talks about it, describing the euphoria that rushes through his body each time. He has found creative ways to mix things up too. When he set the latest of his 11 world records last month in France, he did so while his debut song, Bop, blared out on the stadium speakers.
An upbeat pop track, with nearly 1.5 million plays on Spotify, Duplantis said he was inspired to start writing and recording music while “shooting the s---” with old musician friends at their studio.
The process helped him switch off ahead of the Olympics. But for a man so used to winning, who internally repeats the mantra “you’re the man” ahead of world record attempts, putting his song out to the world sparked some unfamiliar feelings.
“It was quite nerve-wracking,” he says. “You open yourself and feel so vulnerable. I’ve never really [done that], in a weird and strange way. [With music], there’s no clear end point either. It’s not like, I want to jump over the bar at this height. It’s just a vibe you felt in the moment. That balance of how different it is to being an athlete can help to slow things down. The reception was bigger than I could have imagined. I have a bunch of songs. Whatever’s next, we’ll see.”
Even after all he has achieved as a pole vaulter, he still insists there is more to do. He made headlines for an exhibition event in which he and 400m hurdles record holder Karsten Warholm competed in the 100m. Duplantis won, with an impressive time of 10.37sec but, beyond exhibitions, he has no interest in pursuing a different discipline.
His genuine love for pole vault is palpable and he is at peace with the knowledge he may never top his Olympic moment in Paris. “LA [in 2028] would be the only time I could top what happened last year. All of it is an internal competition anyway – just me against the bar, me against myself. That’s all I really care about.”
Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis was speaking at the 25th edition of the Laureus World Sports Awards in Madrid. For more, visit www.laureus.com.
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