Mondo Duplantis has spent 2022 collecting gold medals and world records and here we look at what makes him so brilliant
The phrase “raising the bar” could have been coined for Mondo Duplantis. Doing precisely that is all part of the day job and something the 23-year-old Olympic, world and European pole vault champion has become exceptionally good at. Nobody has done it better – and it led to, among other things, him being named AW international male athlete of 2022.
But why? Given that Duplantis makes the art of propelling oneself to truly great heights so easy, we went in search of some expert opinion to discover the ingredients which all add up to make the American-born Swede such a force of athletic nature.
Scott Simpson, former international pole vaulter and coach to Olympic bronze medallist Holly Bradshaw, was just the man for the job and he reveals that the devil is in the detail.
Three key differences
“Mondo’s speed on the runway is almost unprecedented,” says Simpson. “The speed that he puts into the take-off at the end of the approach run is higher than we have seen from anybody else previously.
“In addition, the guys that have had good speed at take-off typically don’t complement it with on-pole technique which is as good as the slower guys, but Mondo manages to do both.
“He puts a lot of speed through the take-off point but also has incredible on-pole abilities for the speed at which everything is happening – something that is quite unique to him.
“He is also so consistent. He has this huge toolbox that he has built up from doing pole vault from such a young age, which enables him to produce a really consistent output.
“Regardless of whether there’s wind, rain, high pressure, a competitive environment or him jumping on his own – it doesn’t seem to matter because he still produces this incredible output.
“It is a combination of those three factors which make him incredibly difficult to beat just now and leaves him, ultimately, head and shoulders above everyone else.”
Mondo Duplantis (Getty)
Why speed matters
“The more speed you have, the higher the amount of energy you have available to you. Pole vault is an energy storage game. You store energy in the pole as it bends, and the more energy you can store in that pole, the more energy there is that can be returned to you to propel you into the air at the end of the jump.
“That is his gift, to have this incredible amount of speed that he is able to…
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