Armand Duplantis

Armand Gustav "Mondo" Duplantis (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɑ̌rman(d) ˈɡɵ̂sːtav dɵˈplânːtɪs]; born 10 November 1999) is a Swedish and American pole vaulter who competes for Sweden. Duplantis holds the pole vaulting world record (6.30 m; 20 ft 8 in) and is the winner of eight senior global titles. He is a two-time Olympic (2020 and 2024) champion, a three-time World outdoor (2022, 2023 and 2025) champion and a three-time World indoor (2022, 2024 and 2025) champion.

Born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, 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 one of the very few athletes in history to win World Championships titles at youth, junior, and senior levels.

Duplantis is a three-time European champion from 2018, when he set the current world under-20 record, and from 2022 and 2024. European and World Athletics Male Rising Star of the Year in 2018, two years later he was voted World Male Athlete of the Year. He was the 2021 European Indoor Championships gold medalist and at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Duplantis won his first Olympic gold medal. For his 2022 season, which saw him break world records three times, becoming World outdoor and indoor champion, European and Diamond League champion, and clearing six metres or higher 22 times, Duplantis was crowned both European and World Male Athlete of the Year. He continued to shatter his own world record multiple times a year in 2023 (two times), 2024 (three times) and 2025 (four times) including one (6.25 m) at the biggest stage of all, the 2024 Paris Olympics. He became a four-time World Athlete of the Year (2020, 2022, 2023 and 2025) and the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year in 2025. Duplantis is a five-time Diamond League Champion, having qualified for and won the pole vault Diamond League Final event in five consecutive years, from 2021 to 2025.

Duplantis has cleared six metres or higher in competition more times than any athlete in history, including setting 14 world records. After Renaud Lavillenie cleared 6.16 m (20 ft 2½ in) in 2014, Duplantis has single-handedly raised the bar from 6.17 m in 2020 to his current world record of 6.30 m in 2025. As of October 2025, he has cleared six metres or higher for a continuous span of 8 seasons in a total of 79 competitions dating back to 2018 when he cleared 6.05m at the 2018 European Athletics Championships in Berlin.

Duplantis is one of only three men to vault 6.10 m (20 ft 0 in) and above, the others being Lavillenie and Sergey Bubka. As of September 2025, he accounts for 34 of the 46 competitions where an athlete has cleared at least that height: 24 times at outdoor venues and 10 times at indoor venues. Duplantis is widely regarded as the greatest pole vaulter of all time.

Early life

Armand Gustav Duplantis was born on 10 November 1999 into an athletic family in Lafayette, Louisiana, United States. 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. Duplantis grew up primarily speaking English, but also learned Swedish as a second language. He spent summers with his Swedish grandparents.

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. Johanna competes professionally in pole vaulting, also representing Sweden.

Duplantis graduated from Lafayette High School in 2018 and, like his parents and brothers before him, attended Louisiana State University, though he left in 2019 after his first year in order to turn professional.

Early career

Duplantis first tried pole vaulting as a four-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, 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' nickname "Mondo" was given to him at a very young age by his father's best friend who is an Italian from Sicily. "Mondo" means "world" in Italian. At first, he was called "Mondo Man" when he was just a kid before it was shortened to "Mondo". His nickname stuck with him since then perhaps as a foreshadowing of his world domination and record-breaking performances in his sport later in his professional career.

2015–2016: U18 world champion and competing for Sweden

During 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.

In June 2015, Duplantis announced that he would compete for Sweden. As a citizen of both the United States and Sweden, he could have chosen to vault for either country internationally. According to Jonas Anshelm, the Sweden national team pole vault coach who recruited him, Duplantis had originally planned to compete for the United States, but chose Sweden in part because Anshelm had invited Duplantis's father to join the team as a coach. Duplantis has also said that his older brother's great experiences representing Sweden at a youth level, as well as his own love for Sweden as a child made the decision to compete for Sweden very easy, but that he nonetheless still feels a strong bond to Lafayette.

Duplantis represented Sweden for the first time at the 2015 World Youth Championships in Cali, Colombia; where 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 jointly with Ukrainian Vladyslav Malykhin. While competing in Sweden, Duplantis, had first represented a club of his grandparent's town Avesta, IK Stål, and switched to his mother's former club, Upsala IF, in 2016.

On 6 February 2016, Duplantis cleared 5.49 m (18 ft 0 in) at a high school meet in Baton Rouge, 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 cleared 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, on 11 Mar, Duplantis improved his indoor personal record to 5.82 m (19 ft 1 in) in the same facility at the New Balance Nationals in New York City. His 5.82 m mark was however not ratified as a world indoor junior record by IAAF because an on-site anti-doping test did not occur in New York, leaving the official World U20 indoor record going into 2018 still at 5.75 m.

On 1 April, Duplantis cleared 5.90 m at the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays, improving his personal record, setting a new World U20 Record and beating the previous record of 5.80 m set by Maksim Tarasov in 1989 and equalled by Raphael Holzdeppe in 2008 by an astonishing 10 cm. The vault also became a Swedish senior record beating previous mark of 5.87 m set by Oscar Janson in 2003 by 3 cm (1 in). 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.

On 23 July, at the 2017 European Athletics U20 Championships In Grosseto, Italy, Duplantis set a pole vault championship record of 5.65 m to win gold. Duplantis won the competition on just his second jump of the competition by clearing 5.55 m on his first attempt. He then set the bar to 5.65 m and on his third attempt, he soared over the bar to break a Maksim Tarasov's long standing championship record of 5.60 m set in 1989.