Armand Duplantis breaks the pole vault world record with a mark of 6.20 meters

The pole vault, say the physicists, seems complex, but no, a simple physical equation can accurately predict the height that any athlete reaches above the bar, even one as extraordinary as Mondo Duplantis, the Swedish prodigy, gold in the World Championships. Belgrade with a flight of 6.20m, world record.

And the physicists, showing their great knowledge, start talking about the conversion of kinetic energy into potential energy and again kinetic and finally potential, elastic and gravitational... And they speak intelligibly to laymen only, also recognizing their limits, the limits of physics, they add, okay, but of course, to execute a jump well and so many energy transfers, that neither is created nor destroyed, it is only transformed, and we measure it in kilojoules, for all this,

let's finish

They ask for the impossible.

Or not.

They ask for a Mondo.

Duplantis, it is known, and appreciates him from the stands, absorbed, the Italian Marcell Jacobs, 100m Olympic champion and 60m world champion and long jumper until recently, runs the 100m in 10.50s, and jumps more than 7 ,20m.

Two conditions he fulfills.

His pirouettes speak of his gymnastic skills when he is catapulted feet ahead, head down, a projectile towards the bar, his L-turn, well below the center of gravity on the bar, his descent, and he applauds him, also in the stands, the tall champion, Yaroslava Mahuchikh.

And his skills as a dancer are displayed happily before his last jumps, improvising a few steps of a typical Serbian dance, something similar to the sirtaki that Teodorakis invented, to the hilarity and applause of the happy audience.

"It's not the Bubka model, which was a supermuscular physical colossus," explains Adrián Vallés, a 5.70m Spanish pole vaulter who works with future technologies at Telefónica's bigdata center.

“The Ukrainian was more structured.

A jumper made after a laborious apprenticeship.

Mondo is as if he had the pole in his genes, he does everything innately, like geniuses.

Bubka was just so much stronger."

Mondo is nailed to the profile that physicists demand, that of a Swedish boy who, in the overloaded and garish environment of the pavilion that hosted a Eurovision Song Contest, the most remembered event in a post-war Belgrade, smiles angelically, talks absently, and waits , standing, with a 5.20 meter long pole supported by the base on the ground, for the World Cup judges to adjust the bar to 6.20 meters, the height never before attempted by anyone, not even by the greatest of history, not even by Bubka or by Renaud Lavillenie.

It has been almost five hours now that his life revolves in a space of 50 meters by four, a list of 45-meter blue carpet carefully vacuumed at noon from the sand of the neighboring pit that jumps from the soles of the long and triple jumpers .

He is at his house, on the same track,

A few minutes ago, the title that he did not have, world champion, was finally proclaimed.

For this he has needed only four jumps, over 5.60m, 5.85m, 5.95m and 6.05m, one more than expected and than usual in his competitions since the Brazilian Thiago Braz, the Rio Olympic champion, has managed to jump to third at 5.95m and forced a jump-off at 6.05m, with which he could not.

He has already left the ground open to the flying Swede, as the American Christopher Nilsen had done before, who did not exceed 5.90m.

As for Yulimar Rojas, in the morning, gold is only half of his goal;

the other half, the one of the constant search, the challenge always to its limits, was before her.

Above.

In the first attempt and in the second he enters slowly, he does not bend the pole, aborts his flights, goes under the bar and lands on his feet.

Would this be the beginning of another obsession like the one he suffered, two whole years, with 6.19m?

Fear fades quickly.

It takes less than five seconds for Mondo, 20 steps, to travel the 45 meters with the two kilos of the weight, and its corresponding imbalance, before nailing it securely in the box, starting to bend it before taking off the feet from the ground, a smooth takeoff , fluid, and shoot out to respond to the demands of physics, and demonstrate to atheists that of the dynamic transformation of energy.

He steps over the bar, which trembles on its way down, and resists.

And so, on the third attempt, he becomes the first person to exceed 6.20m.

One more centimeter for him, an infinite flight for athletics.

“Sometimes things happen that cannot be explained.

Every time I am in Belgrade I have this feeling that I am going to do something special,” she says.

"There are no limits.

The sky is the limit".

But the presenter who questions him finds a limit.

Do you know how to say thank you in Serbian, he asks her.

“No, she answers, but I know how to dance Serbian dance…” And she raises her arms in an embrace and moves her light dancer's feet.

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