Why Mondo Duplantis is living for the moment

The Swedish pole vaulter has already established himself as an athletics great but his relentless pursuit of excellence continues to set him apart

When Mondo Duplantis stands at the end of his run-up, he isn’t thinking about medals. He’s thinking about moments. Specifically, his mind is filled with the sequence of small events which, when carried out correctly, add up to the greatest moment of all – that short but oh so sweet freefall back to earth after the bar has been cleared that signals his job has been done.

The 24-year-old AW International Male Athlete of the Year is unchallenged at the top of his sport. He is the Olympic pole vault champion and in 2023 won his second consecutive world title during a season where he broke his own world record twice.

Those are the headline stats, but there’s more. In 2023, Duplantis won 16 out of the 17 competitions he took part in. The owner of the top eight vaults in history produced a combined total of 20 clearances of six metres (a fabled mark) or above, taking his career tally to 74. As World Athletics points out, that means he alone accounts for 34 per cent of all the six-metre clearances ever recorded.

All of the above underlines that, with Duplantis, you know what you’re getting. It’s a fact which doesn’t always work to his advantage, though. One of sport’s greatest attractions is its ability to shock and surprise so, when you have someone who is literally head and shoulders (plus part of his torso) above every else, there is the potential for complacency to set in – not just from the watching public but from the athlete himself.

When you’ve won everything there is to win, what else is there left to do? His answer is simple. Get better.

“If I’m only thinking about medals, I’m missing the whole meaning of what I’ve always been trying to do,” he said earlier this year. “[That’s] trying to push myself and push the barriers of what is possible. I think heights for me now are the most important thing. I really want to see how high I can go.”

The answer, so far, is 6.23m. That height arrived as a final flourish to his competitive year, during the Diamond League final at Hayward Field – the venue at which he had also broken the world record when winning his first outdoor world title in 2022. As difficult as doing that has been, it’s evident there is more to come, particularly given his mindset.

Duplantis is one of a current crop of…