Swedish Olympic champion Armand Duplantis has broken the men’s pole vault world record for the sixth time in crazy scenes at an indoor meet in France.
As music blasted and spectators clapped the 23-year-old in, he charged up the runway at the All Star Perche meet and cleared six metres and 22 centimetres.
Event director Renaud Lavillenie, the 2012 London Olympics men’s pole vault champion, immediately hurtled toward the mat to embrace an ecstatic Duplantis.
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Since arriving on the scene and eyeing Lavillenie’s world record set in 2014, Duplantis has raised the mark from 6.16m to 6.22m across six record-shattering meets.
“When you have moments like this, when the energy is so high and you’re going down there for the record, it feels like levitating, it feels like my body never even touched the ground the whole jump,” Duplantis said.
“Each world record feels like it brings something a bit different out of me.
“Maybe the first one might have been a bit crazier, but this might be number two right now. It’s really unbelievable.
“The pressure doesn’t really feel the same anymore to me. I’ve proved a lot the past few years, the past two years especially, and I know what kind of jumper I am, what I am capable of. I know that I am deserving to be in the spot that I am.”
Duplantis cleared six metres for the 60th time at the meet in Clermont-Ferrand.
While the men’s world record progressed by only two centimetres between 1994 and 2020, Duplantis has improved it by six centimetres in the last three years.
The USA-born superstar won gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and at last year’s world championships in Oregon.
Australia’s Kurtis Marschall, a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist, finished second in the All Star Perche meet with a vault of 5.91m.
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