World record-holder targets history in front of home crowd, while athletes who shone in Oslo aim to keep up momentum on the next Diamond League stop
Mondo Duplantis is hoping to make his “biggest dream” come true by breaking his own pole vault world record in front of what will be a partisan Swedish crowd at the Bauhaus Diamond League meeting in Stockholm on Sunday (June 15).
The 25-year-old has broken the record no fewer than 11 times now, most recently with a clearance of 6.27m at the All Star Perche meeting in France in February, and has created history on his way to Olympic and world titles. He hasn’t managed to reach new heights in the city he calls home, though, and with the weather conditions set to be perfect, he is planning to change that.
“My biggest dream now – and I feel like the only thing that I’m missing – is to break the record here at Stockholm,” he said. “It’s the thing that I can’t get off my mind a little bit.”
Expectation follows Duplantis wherever he goes but the spotlight is never brighter than when he is competing on home turf. Fresh from having a set a meeting record of 6.15m at the Bislett Games in Oslo earlier this week, he is taking his next assignment particularly seriously.
“I would say it’s like a mini championship for me,” added Duplantis, who was born in Louisiana but competes for Sweden and has an extended Swedish family, including his mother. “[That’s the] kind of pressure that I put on myself. I have a lot of my family here, pretty much all of my family, from both sides. So that raises the pressure quite up a bit as well.
“In track and field, you don’t really get that type of home field advantage and that kind of feeling that much. But here I’m able to really have that, which definitely comes with some added pressure. But I think it’s super nice too, because it feels like I’m representing something that’s a little bit bigger than just me when I’m on the track.”
Duplantis will be up against the likes of Emmanouil Karalis, Sam Kendricks, Kurtis Marschall, Ernest John Obiena and Menno Vloon.
The latest stop on the Diamond League programme is promising plenty of fireworks elsewhere, too, with a mouthwatering men’s 400m hurdles also in prospect.
World champion Karsten Warholm created the headlines in Oslo with his run of 32.67 that lowered his 300m hurdles world best but, as in Norway, he will be up against Olympic champion Rai Benjamin…
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