Duplantis crashes after exceeding 6.23 m. STEVE DIPAOLA (EFE)
When on February 8, 2020, the last year before the pandemic, on a dark and cold winter afternoon in Torun (Poland), the city of Copernicus, a carefree 20-year-old boy, half Swedish, like his mother, half American, appears in Louisiana , like his father Mondo Duplantis, with the most normal physique in the world (1.81 meters, 79 kilos), short neck, broad shoulders, always smiling, clear eyes, happily jumped 6.17 meters with the pole and hit one centimeter World record set by Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie nine years earlier. After rubbing his eyes to confirm that the miracle his eyes had seen was not magic, the great athletics lovers dubbed the young prodigy the Mozart of pole vaulting. and they assured without trembling that the 6.20 meter limit, which a few months earlier was considered a utopia, would fall sooner rather than later, and who knows whether the 6.25 meter limit.
Some may have been startled by his prediction, but they soon realized that they had fallen short of expectations. Three years and seven months have passed. Since then, no other pole vaulter has managed to clear the 6.10 m mark (only Sergei Bubka and Lavillenie have done it in history), but Duplantis continued to climb tirelessly, inch by inch, as if the atmosphere was carrying him , a ladder. allows you to run 45 meters in 20 supports until you reach a speed of 10 meters per second, carrying in front of you like a spear a yellow stick 5.20 meters long and weighing two kilos drive to convert all the kinetic energy into force bend a rigid rod as much as a tree trunk. Since then, the athlete, who learned to jump with a broomstick on the sofa at home before he could almost walk, has improved his world record six times by imitating his father Greg, a high-performance pole vaulter (5.80m, his top score from the year 1993). , when his son Armand, called Mondo by all, was three years old), at a rate of twice and a peak per year, in 2020, 2022 and 2023 (2021, empty due to the impact of the pandemic) and most recently, on Sunday, noon on the Pacific coast of the United States, Hayward Field Stadium, in Eugene, almost midnight in Europe, to leave it at 6.23 m.
The impressive flight of Armand Duplantis in Eugene.
6.23, his seventh world record.
The previous ones
6.22-Clermont (2023, indoors)
6.21-Eugene (2022, outdoor)
6.20-Belgrade (2022, i)
6.19-Belgrade (2022, i)
6.18-Glasgow (2020, i)
6.17-Torun (2020, i)pic.twitter.com/ZBRC736a4m— juanma bellón (@juanmacorre) September 18, 2023
It was the shortest and most perfect competition in recent memory. Duplantis jumped only three times, not a single jump (5.62 m, 5.82 m, 6.02 m) before he was left alone and immediately and without hesitation asked to raise the bar to 6.23 m. His body lightly brushed against the band, which trembled on its supports as it descended but did not collapse. The first time he broke his seventh record. And more than him, who celebrated it wildly, shouted and hit the audience as hard as punches, so much adrenaline had accumulated and had to be released, his competitors celebrated his arrival in seventh heaven, especially the gigantic American Sam Kendricks, who lifted him up. almost on his shoulders in triumph, and his father and all his people in the stands of the stadium converted for the 2022 World Cup, where he had already set the record of 6.21 m when he won it and a haven for athletics in the Empire . “This stadium has history and a modern touch, the track is super fast, the spectators and the energy they transmit are fantastic,” said the athlete, two-time outdoor world champion and Olympic champion in Tokyo, after the results. “It has everything I need to break the world record.”
The 6.30 m barrier, which no one dared to dream of, as impossible as it seemed, now seems to experts to be just as possible as the 6.25 m barrier was three years ago, and a matter of time (and… Glücks: Unbelievable, in such a complicated situation). specialty, Duplantis is never injured). “I hope to keep jumping and jump higher and higher, but now I just think about enjoying the moment,” said the athlete, who competes for Sweden and has already jumped 6.05m at the age of 18. “I’ve loved pole vaulting so much since I was a kid…I just want to be able to take pole vaulting to another level and get as many eyes on the vault as possible by jumping really high and doing fun things make …”
The season, which ended Sunday with the Diamond League final in Eugene, USA, was phenomenal for track and field, and not just because of Duplantis. I count on his two records, 6.22 m in February in Clermont Ferrand; 6.23 in September, 11 world records were broken, and figures like the Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen, another like Duplantis, who was born with the century (he turns 23 this Tuesday), have established themselves as phenomena. In his still unfulfilled desire to dislodge the Moroccan Hicham el Guerruj from the top spot in the 1,500 m and the mile, Ingebrigtsen, an almost unbeatable middle-distance runner (he only failed in the final of the 1,500 m World Championships), tries to reach the distance in (of which he is an Olympic champion, the distance that fascinates him most), has broken two world records at unusual distances (2 miles, 7 m 54.06 seconds and 2,000 meters, 4 m 43.13 seconds), in July he broke the European record of 1,500 m (3:27.14 minutes, still a long way from El Guerruj’s 3:26 minutes) and last weekend he broke the continental record for the mile in 24 hours at the same Hayward Field in Eugene, on Saturday with 3:43, 73 minutes, six tenths off the world record set by El Guerruj and over 3,000 m on Sunday, 7 minutes and 23.63 seconds.
So appetizing are Ingebrigtsen’s races, so good are the hares, so great is the gradual, imperceptibly increasing rhythm of the Norwegian’s steps that everyone who takes part in them improves their records. That’s what happened to Villar de Gallimazo from Salamanca, 24-year-old Mario García Romo, who came fourth on Saturday in the Ingebrigtsen Mile with a time so good (3:47.69 seconds) that he beat a Spanish record set by Tenth was considered inviolable for a second. for 38 years, set by the legendary Toledo native José Luis González (3:47.79 minutes) on July 27, 1985 at the Bislett Stadium in Oslo, second to the world record then set by Steve Cram (3:46.32 minutes) was held.
In the final in Eugene, a second world record was broken with the women’s 5,000 m run. This was achieved by the 26-year-old, 45 kilogram Tigray-Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay, the world champion over 10,000 m, during which Sifan Hassan collapsed, breaking the already great record with 14 minutes and 0.21 seconds (14 minutes and 5.20 seconds ) by almost five seconds s), which the Kenyan faith Kipyegon founded just last June. That same summer, Kipyegon, world champion in the 1,500 m and 5,000 m in Budapest, also broke the world records in the 1,500 m (3 minutes, 49.11 seconds) and the mile (4 minutes, 7.64 seconds).
World records were also broken in 2023 by the Ethiopian Lamecha Girma (7 minutes and 52.11 seconds in the 3,000 meter steeplechase), the North American Ryan Crouser (23.56 seconds in the shot put) and the Spanish María Pérez, double world champion in walking May He set the world record for 35 kilometers in 2 hours, 37 minutes and 15 seconds.
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