Pole vault’s puzzle-master aims for the stars

As a pole vaulter, Armand Duplantis is accustomed to soaring high. His ambitions are just as lofty. The 22-year-old Swede has made no secret of wanting to be “the best pole vaulter that ever lived”. Such a statement, from the lips of most athletes, would be deemed arrogant, even deluded.

But Duplantis has shown very early in his career that he is already among the sport’s elite. An Olympic gold medallist — he was one of the brightest stars in Tokyo last year — he has also broken the world record twice, clearing 6.17m to top Renaud Lavillenie’s mark back in February 2020 and surpassing it with a 6.18m effort a week later on the World Indoor Tour. He then bettered Sergey Bubka’s 26-year-old outdoor mark with a clearance of 6.15m in September 2020. He went undefeated that year and proved it was no flash in the pan with an incredible 2021: 15 wins, including Olympic gold, and 14 six-metre clearances.

Duplantis has no intention of resting on his laurels. “I want to do everything you can in this sport. I want to win everything there is to win, and do it more times than anyone else has done it,” he said. “If you don’t know the history of pole vault, that is really big shoes to fill, when you are following Renaud Lavillenie and Sergey Bubka, people that have won many global titles.”

Bubka is widely considered the greatest pole vaulter in history after winning an Olympic gold, six consecutive world titles, and setting no fewer than 35 world records before retiring in 2001. Lavillenie, who broke Bubka’s 20-year-old world record with a 6.16m clearance in 2014, has an Olympic gold and silver, a World Championship silver and four bronze, and three World Indoor Championship titles, to his name. “I want to do more than Bubka’s done, for sure,” Duplantis told The New York Times. “More Olympics than him, more World Championships.”

This year, therefore, is central to the young prodigy’s quest to become the best-ever pole vaulter. “I’ve never won the World Championships, so that’s my biggest goal for 2022,” he told World Athletics. “I need to win, as I finished second to Sam [Kendricks] in 2019. My training has gone well. I’m both stronger and faster. And I have not had any setbacks with injuries or illnesses.”

Duplantis has also sharpened his focus — literally — for the Worlds, which are scheduled to take place in Eugene (Oregon), USA, in July. He recently underwent laser surgery to improve his eyesight. Having competed in contact lenses through his young career, he wanted to eliminate the anxiety of having to deal with problems with the lenses — understandable, given the physical exertion, head-movement and impact stresses — during an event. “It’s not something I have chosen to speak about,” he told Aftonbaldet, “but my biggest fear has always been that there would be some trouble with the lenses in the middle of a competition. Especially in the big championships.”

The procedure appears to have helped: Duplantis admits to feeling better and his results so far this year bear it out. At the Berlin indoor meet last week, the Swede cleared 6.03m, a centimetre more than he achieved at Karlsruhe in his first appearance of 2022. Two gold medals and two 6m clearances early in the season are encouraging in themselves, but he also very nearly surpassed 6.19m, hoping to beat his own mark of 6.18m. He came agonisingly close in Berlin, with the bar wobbling before falling to the ground. “I really liked my second attempt because I felt like I had the height to pass,” he said. “I’m at a point in my career where I’m progressing in small steps. One week I change my run-up, in the next week I am jumping a bit more aggressively. That way I can improve step by step. I know what to do and that I am in a position to jump higher. I have all the pieces of the puzzle to beat my personal record.”

Just how did Duplantis get so good so young? He was granted exceptional gifts, the very best of nature and nurture. His father Greg, a former US pole vaulter, took on Bubka internationally. His mother Helena Hedlund was an accomplished Swedish heptathlete, who could long-jump 6.01m and high-jump 1.5m. They met during their time at Louisiana State University, and Duplantis, born and raised in Louisiana (but choosing to represent his mother’s country), had access to everything he needed, including a home-made set-up, to take up the sport. He began showing promise at the age of three! “From a very young age when I started, I just always thought that I’m destined to become the best pole vaulter in the world,” he said. “I always thought that if I did the right things and I followed the right path, that I could end up being where I want to be.”

The early immersion and tens of thousands of hours of repetition gave him an incredible head-start. It meant that by the age of 18, he had been pole-vaulting for 15 years! Added to this advantage was a competitive mindset. Some prodigies shy away from competition because of the weight of expectations; Duplantis embraced it, using it as another training tool. “Competitions are some of the best training because you figure out the small little details such as the right pole stiffness, pole length, and where to grip on the pole,” he said. It helped, too, that he was an underdog competing against more seasoned pole vaulters, including the world’s best in Lavillenie and Kendricks

“My first time competing against them was when I was 17 and I was this rising star kinda kid that had a lot of potential,” Duplantis told World Athletics. “From the very beginning they showed me nothing but respect. That was crazy, competing against them. I know that the only way to be the best is if you compete against the best – ‘iron sharpens iron’ kind of stuff. I got beat up a lot of times. I didn’t win one meet against these guys in 2017. In 2018 I won a couple, in 2019 I was winning about half the meets and then 2020 it got better, so I think it was super important for me.”

Duplantis has also focused on improving every aspect of his game, aided by an insatiable curiosity about the sport and a readiness to soak in information. During a pre-Olympics interaction with Bubka, he took the opportunity to quiz the legend on the technical specifications of the poles he had used to set his many world records. He also mines the minds of his parents, who are both coaches. “My father might have got me to 5.80m, but I definitely give just as much credit, and maybe even more, to my mother, who got me to 6.00m,” he said.

Duplantis has added working muscle, refined his diet — finally listening to his mother, who is also a nutritionist, and giving up fried chicken — and discovered that golf has helped better his already strong mindset. “It’s mentally challenging in a completely different way, which I kind of like,” he said. “It’s not like you can get riled up and it’s going to help your next shot. You really have to figure out a way to tone down your anger. In pole vault, being emotional has never really hurt me — you can really attack a jump — but in golf it’s almost the exact opposite.”

So, how high can Duplantis raise the bar? Bubka told Olympic Channel last year that heights of up to 6.50m can be achieved with “the right technique”. Duplantis, for his part, said, “I do not know what my limit is. If I feel like I am becoming stagnant then I will try something new. I want to break the record more times and I really do want to get into the 6.20s. I just think ‘20’ sounds so much higher than everything else.”