“Honestly, if I don't beat this moment in my career, then I'm pretty OK with that, you know?
Mondo! Clap. Clap. Clap. Mondo! Clap. Clap. Clap. Not since Usain Bolt was leaving sprinting foes in the dust had an Olympic track-and-field stadium been so enraptured by a single mononymous athlete. Bolt.
Now, Mondo.
Armand “Mondo” Duplantis, the son of an American pole-vaulter father and Swedish heptathlete mother who decided early in his career to compete for Sweden rather than the United States, had the stadium to himself, a dream for a field athlete whose exploits are usually overshadowed by the races on the track. The runners were done for the night, and Duplantis had already clinched his second consecutive Olympic gold medal and even shattered the Olympic record, celebrating that feat by mimicking nonchalant shooting pose of Turkish Olympian Yusuf Dikeç, which has gone viral and become a meme.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Now it was Duplantis’ turn to create a viral moment of his own. He was going to attempt to set a new world record for the ninth time, raising the bar to 6.25 m, or 20.5 feet, off the ground. Clearing this height would better his own 6.24 m mark he set in China in April of this year. (Duplantis earns between $30,000 and $100,000 every time he sets a new world record. So he raises the bar by a single centimeter to break it as often as he can.)
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The more than 70,000 fans in the packed stadium were locked in on Duplantis. The stage was all his.
“What a time to be inside the Stade de France,” the public address announcer said over the loudspeaker. “We are the lucky few.”
Duplantis, who has dominated the pole vault for the last four years and might be, along with the American sprinter Noah Lyles, the brightest global star in his sport, missed on his first attempt. An unusual Scandinavian-Cajun brew filled one block of the stands: fans from Sweden, plus Duplantis’ family members and friends from both Sweden and Lafayette, La., where Duplantis grew up, gathered there. They all wore Sweden shirts though. “People in both places like crawfish,” noted Duplantis family friend Remy Jadell, a lawyer who lives in Lafayette.
A Swedish press official standing behind this area noted that Duplantis wasn’t all that close on his first jump. He cast doubt that Duplantis would even try his third attempt, if he missed his second. He’s already accomplished plenty. Why risk overexertion or even injury?
Duplantis didn’t convert his second attempt. But he had promised before the Olympics to “do something that’s never been done before.” Mondo. Mondo. Mondo. The chants continued. He wasn’t about to let down the legions.
A little after 10:17 p.m. Paris time, Duplantis sprinted toward the pole for his final try. “He’s the fastest pole vaulter out there,” American Sam Kendricks, who won pole vault silver on Monday, said after the competition. This speed, according to Kendricks, gives Duplantis the forward momentum to set new standards in his sport. “I’ve got to match his speed, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to match it,” says Kendricks.
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Once Duplantis planted his pole in the box, he had a really good feeling. “Right when I hit it at the takeoff, I kind of knew,” he said afterward. Duplantis rose, rose, let go—and cleared the bar, falling to the mat and setting off a cathartic roar. People in the Mondo friends and family section mobbed one another. Duplantis ran over to his girlfriend, fashion model and influencer Desiré Inglander, and they shared a kiss. They may be the most famous couple in their country, unable to walk down the street without being recognized.
“Honestly, if I don’t beat this moment in my career, then I’m pretty OK with that, you know?” said Duplantis. “I don’t think you really can get much better than what just happened. So it’s dang amazing. And I’m so …” Duplantis paused. “I’m a happy man.”
When Duplantis first moved to Sweden, after completing a year at LSU, where he was friends with Sha’Carri Richardson, in 2019, he felt pressure to learn the language, and drive Swedish cars, to gain acceptance and popularity. By this point, however, the Scandinavian country has claimed him and Abba with similar conviction. (“Dancing Queen” played in the stadium after Duplantis broke the world record.)
“I think it’s fair to say that if you live in Sweden and feel Swedish and it’s enough,” says Stian Armstad, a health care executive from Stockholm who was actually born in Norway, so he sympathized with Duplantis’ predicament. “In Sweden, we say that if you just stand on the right side of the escalator, you’re Swedish,” says Armstad. “So it’s OK. And we love Mondo.”
Duplantis chatted up King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden after setting the record. “Fam vad cool,” he told Swedish reporters.
“Wow how cool.”
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A karaoke celebration Tuesday night was at least in the cards for Duplantis and his crew, Inglander told TIME after he broke the record. “He can sing really good,” she said. “Don’t tell him I told you that. But he’s actually really talented.”
“But I’m probably gonna be shit, because I can already feel myself losing my voice,” said Duplantis. “So it’s already a bad start to the night. But I’ll probably have some liquid courage, and I’ll probably get up on that stage anyway.”
“I’m going to have a good night,” he said. “I’ve been pretty much locked in a cave for the past three months, I really haven’t done anything”
And once he comes down from this post-Olympic, post-world-record high, Duplantis and Inglander—who regularly post enviable images on Instagram from all sorts of exotic locales—plan to take a vacation.
Where?
“That’s a secret,” she said.
What Inglander would say is she had no doubt Mondo would break the record for his largest worldwide audience yet. Why?