Mondo Duplantis finally flies over 6.19m

A playful, mischievous and slippery angel, he looks like Mondo Duplantis, they say, almost ecstatically, who enjoy seeing him run light, apparently fragile, and his ankles as if by magic barely dig into the synthetic track, as if they were floating, and he runs at full speed. speed with a six-meter-long vertical yellow pole in his hands, only twenty steps and he reaches 10 meters per second of speed, 36 kilometers per hour, when he sticks it in the box, and bends it and like a catapult he drive and he rises, flies.

He exceeds the easy-to-climb bar and only when he falls does he graze it a little with his knees, and the bar trembles but does not fall, and is still trembling when the angelic athlete, his blonde hair floating, runs shot to the stands, to hug his father, with his coach,

with his girlfriend… It was the third attempt of the afternoon to jump 6.19m, it was the 51st attempt in the last three years over a height that no one had ever jumped before.

A chase that began in February 2020, the day after he himself, the Swedish prodigy, set the world record at 6.18m.

“And they don't know how good it feels to get it,” says Duplantis happily, who was born in Lafayette, Louisiana (United States), only 22 years ago, and lives there.

"Never has a height been so resistant to me, I have had to fight hard to achieve it."

After searching for the 6.19m on a single-themed pilgrimage through the indoor arenas, the pavilions and the open-air stadiums of Liévin, Clermont Ferrand, Düsseldorf, Rouen, Belgrade, Torun, Hengelo, Oslo, Stockholm, Tokyo, Paris, Brussels, Zurich , Karlsruhe, Berlin, Uppsala and Birmingham, finds them, finally, in the Stark pavilion in Belgrade, the same stage that in 10 days will host the indoor world championships.

And there, obviously, Duplantis will try to jump 6.20m, and, already freed from the almost obsessive backpack of 6.19m, he will probably succeed, which will not quench his thirst.

Like other unique athletes who, after Usain Bolt, have coincided in time to the delight of fans, who enjoy a unique era;

like the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge, the god of the marathon who only fights against time;

like Yulimar Rojas, the Venezuelan triple jumper for whom the land is the obsession, the distance, Duplantis does not compete against other athletes but against the air, with getting higher every day, with climbing centimeter by centimeter.

They seek a form of almost mystical transcendence that is still so muscular, fast, human.

They are perfection, and they are right there, and the anticipation they arouse makes every track meet a wonderful opportunity to attend something never seen before.

Duplantis awaits Duplantis in Belgrade as his great rival in North American Chris Nilsen,

“Mondo is tremendously regular, has a good head, unique qualities and prepares perfectly for the championships.

He comes to them always in his best shape”, says coach Jon Karla Lizeaga, who was left speechless watching him at the Tokyo Games.

“After securing the gold medal with a jump of 6.02m, Mondo tried to jump 6.19m, and he surpassed the height widely, but on the way down he brushed the bar with his chest and knocked down, but it is the most spectacular jump I have ever seen in my life".

In the Serbian capital, on Monday, Duplantis jumps to the first 5.61m, 5.85m and 6.00m.

Then, to the third, the 6.19m of the world record.

“When a height is resisted so much and becomes obsessive and takes away sleep, the athlete usually gets frustrated, anxiety-ridden, and spoils.

He rushes into the race, which is no longer fluid, but abrupt, the muscle shortens, ”explains Lizeaga, who trained Naroa Agirre, the national record holder.

“But the extraordinary thing is that this has not affected Mondo, who always does what has to be done, running very fast and very wide, and from that combination of speed and amplitude power is born.

And that's what it's about."

It is the fourth time that Duplantis, the Mozart of the pole touched by the single wand, the Jonathan Edwards, the pure talent and the beauty of the technical gesture, cleanliness, fragility, pole vaults higher than anyone else.

In Rome, in the summer of 2020, he jumped 6.15m, the outdoor record, one centimeter higher than the Ukrainian Sergey Bubka had ever flown.

Before, in two weeks of February 2020, in Torun (Poland), 6.17m, and in Glasgow, 6.18, he beat twice in a row the 6.16m with which the Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie had surpassed in February 2014, the 6.15m that Bubka had jumped in February 1993.

Both Lavillenie and Bubka, Duplantis's opposite athlete in style, all muscle of steel and hardness even in his eyes, Hellenistic perfection, achieved their records in the sanctuary of the pole vault, the Donetsk pavilion, Bubka's hometown, a venue devoured by fire in 2014, when the first Russian invasion of the city, a place that will probably never see Duplantis fly.

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