BELGRADE (AFP, REUTERS) - Armand Duplantis, already assured of his place in pole vault history, flew even higher on Monday (March 7) when he broke his own world record with a leap of 6.19m at the Belgrade Indoor Meeting.
It was a performance he could only describe as "perfection".
The 22-year-old, who had already won the pole vault meet in Belgrade before his third attempt, improved the previous record by 1cm.
He nudged the bar with his knee slightly but nevertheless cleared it before jumping off the mat and pumping his fists in celebration.
"A height like 6.19 - it demands perfection," said the American-born Swede.
"All the numbers have to be right. So I just figured it out on that last attempt and I was able to get over it finally."
Duplantis now owns the three highest marks in the discipline. He broke Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie's 6.16m world mark with a clearance of 6.17m in February 2020 and then eclipsed that record just a week later by another centimetre.
The Olympic and 2018 European pole vault champion will now be eager to complete his set of gold medals at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, in July.
He had made several attempts to clear 6.19m previously, including at the Tokyo Games last August, and revealed he might have tried as many as 50 times.
"It's been a long time coming. I've never had a height that has given me that much trouble, so it's a very good feeling. It was really hard fought over these past two years. I'm really happy," said Duplantis, who believes he could put on an even better performance when he returns to Belgrade next week for the World Indoor Championships, which is another title missing from his record.
"I don't think this is the highest I'm ever going to jump. I think that there's going to be a lot more to come."
Also known as "Mondo", the Olympic gold secured by Duplantis boosted his status in a sport searching for star quality since the retirement of Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt in 2017.
His exuberant celebrations and looks straight out of a teenage romantic film, a genre he loves, mean he fits the bill.
Duplantis is a product of a sport-obsessed family with their own vaulting apparatus in their Louisiana garden.
His American father, Greg, a former pole vaulter still supervises his technique to this day, while his Swedish mother, Helena, a former heptathlete and volleyball player, oversees his physical preparation.
At times, Duplantis seems able to raise the record 1cm at a time, like Soviet and Ukrainian great Sergey Bubka, who, in the days when outdoors and indoors were considered separate, broke the outdoor record 17 times and set indoor bests 18 times from 1984 and 1994.
World Athletics has since removed the distinction between indoors and outdoors in pole vault marks.
