It will go down in history as one of the greatest pole vault competitions ever seen.
On a balmy, sunny evening on the shores of Lake Geneva in Lausanne on Thursday, Mondo Duplantis and Manolo Karalis delivered a battle for the ages.
Duplantis had said before the competition that “the level in the pole vault is now so high that it’s always pushing us to the next level”.
At the Place de la Navigation, he and Karalis proved that emphatically, as both sailed effortlessly to the once mythical mark of 6.00m in just four jumps with a perfect card.
The next bar had been set at 6.11m, but with the rest of the field now out of the equation and after a short discussion, Duplantis and Karalis decided to attack the meeting record of 6.16m instead.
Duplantis hopped over the bar at the first attempt, breaking his own record and setting up what looked like a certain victory.
Yet Karalis stunned the raucous Lausanne crowd when he cleared his second attempt, posting a new outdoor personal best and heaping the pressure back on his rival.
Always up for the fight, Duplantis then cleared the next bar, set by the Wanda Diamond League’s Official Timekeeper OMEGA at 6.21m, with his first jump.
That prompted a wry smile and a shake of the head from Karalis, who must have wondered what he has to do to beat the world record holder.
It proved to be the last clearance of the night, as Karalis failed to go higher than 6.16m and Duplantis missed two world record attempts at 6.32m.
Yet the crowd had been treated to an unforgettable competition, the first ever in which two men had jumped higher than 6.10m.
