Sweden’s Armand Duplantis breaks pole vault world record for 13th time

BUDAPEST – Sweden’s Armand Duplantis had promised a “big leap” and he duly delivered on Aug 12.

The 25-year-old broke his own pole vault world record with a clearance of 6.29m at the Hungarian Grand Prix meeting in Budapest, the 13th time he has set a new world mark as he continues to defy gravity.

The two-time Olympic champion maintained his tradition of improving on his previous record by 1cm, with his second attempt at the Gyulai Istvan Memorial overhauling the mark he set in Stockholm in June.

Duplantis had looked a little off his best form, missing his first attempt at 6.11m 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 two-time world champion was unsuccessful on his first try and while he rattled the bar slightly on his second effort, he 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.

The Swede, who won his second world title at the same National Athletics Centre in 2023, ran straight to the crowd to celebrate with his partner Desire Inglander and his family.

On Aug 11, Duplantis missed most of the press conference ahead of the Budapest meet, 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,” he said.

He stayed true to his word to the delight of the Budapest crowd and has now soared 15cm higher than Sergey Bubka, whom Duplantis once described as “mythological”.

The American-born Duplantis first broke the world record in 2020 in Poland, with his leap of 6.17m surpassing by 1cm the previous record set by Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie six years earlier.

Lavillenie had beaten Bubka’s best jump of 6.14m, which had stood for almost 20 years, but Duplantis has taken the sport to another level and on Aug 16 competes at the Silesia Diamond League in Poland, where he also broke the world record in 2024. 

In other news, American Fred Kerley, a two-time 100m Olympic medallist, has been provisionally suspended for failing to notify anti-doping officials of his whereabouts, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) announced.

Kerley, who took 100m silver at Tokyo 2020 and bronze at Paris 2024 as well as the 2022 world 100m crown, was suspended for “failing to comply with his anti-doping whereabouts obligations”, according to the AIU.

Elite athletes have strict requirements about informing anti-doping officials about their location, such as at training camps or when travelling, and must provide a time and location each day to comply with rules regarding unannounced doping tests.

Three failures within a year to comply with the requirements, such as a missed test or inaccurate information given to the anti-doping agency, are punishable.

Kerley, in a posting on X, shared a letter from last week saying he intends to contest the violation ruling, saying one or more of his missed tests should be set aside “either because he was not negligent or because the Doping Control Officer did not do what was reasonable under the circumstances to locate him at his designated location”.

The 30-year-old was a Diamond League champion in 2018 over 400m and third in the event at the 2019 world championships, before dropping the distance to concentrate on running the 100m.

After a runner-up effort to Italy’s Marcell Jacobs at the Tokyo Olympics, Kerley took the world title in 2022 on home soil at Eugene before adding bronze to his Olympic medal collection in Paris in 2024. He is the seventh-fastest man in history with a personal best of 9.76 seconds. REUTERS, AFP