(Reuters) -Sweden’s Mondo Duplantis broke his own pole vault world record with a clearance of 6.29 metres at the Hungarian Grand Prix meeting in Budapest on Tuesday, the 13th time he has set a new world mark as he continues to defy gravity.
The double-Olympic champion maintained his tradition of improving on his previous record by one centimetre, with his second attempt at the Istvan Gyulai Memorial overhauling the mark he set in Stockholm in June.
Duplantis had looked a little off his best form, missing his first attempt at 6.11 and, after Greece’s Emmanouil Karalis retired having failed twice at the same height, the Swede had the bar raised to make his usual world record attempt.
The 25-year-old twice world champion was unsuccessful on his first try and while he rattled the bar slightly on his second effort, Duplantis looked up almost in disbelief to see he had again reached a new height in the discipline he dominates.
“I love Hungary very much. The track is very good, I love the crowd, I would like to return, thank you,” Duplantis said.
Duplantis, who won his second world title in the same stadium in 2023, ran straight to the crowd to celebrate with his partner Desire Inglander and his family.
On Monday, Duplantis missed most of the press conference ahead of the Budapest meeting, apologising when he turned up late, saying he had a lot of work to do on his time management.
“I think I’ll have to make up for it tomorrow with a big leap,” Duplantis said.
He duly stayed true to his word to the delight of the Budapest crowd, and has now soared 15 centimetres higher than Sergey Bubka, who Duplantis once described as ‘mythological’.
The American-born Duplantis first broke the world record in 2020 in Poland, with his leap of 6.17 surpassing by one centimetre the previous record set by Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie six years earlier.
Lavillenie had beaten Bubka’s best jump of 6.14, which had stood for almost 20 years, but Duplantis has taken the sport to another level and on Saturday competes at the Silesia Diamond League, where he also broke the world record last year.
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes, editing by Pritha Sarkar and Ken Ferris)
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