As he was warming up ahead of the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Stockholm on Sunday, Mondo Duplantis exchanged a brief conversation with Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt.
A few hours later, he showed once again why he is now on a par with Bolt as one of the greatest athletes in the history of track and field.
Duplantis had broken the world record 11 times before this meeting, notching up four Diamond League titles, two Olympic gold medals and two world titles in the process.
Yet one thing had always eluded him: a world record in front of his home crowd in Stockholm.
On Sunday, the stage seemed set for him to finally achieve that goal. Conditions in the Swedish capital were unusually clement, with temperatures of 25 degrees at the start of the evening. And Duplantis was in formidable form, having sailed over 6.15m without breaking a sweat a few days earlier in Oslo.
Sure enough, he started furiously in front of his home crowd at the 1912 Olympic Stadium, reaching the 6.00m mark in just four jumps with a perfect card.
With victory in the bag, Duplantis had only one thing in his sights. As soon as he had cleared six metres, he asked the Wanda Diamond League’s Official Timekeeper OMEGA to set the next bar at 6.28m, a world record height.
Not for the first time in his career, Duplantis then took down the world record at the very first attempt, comfortably clearing the bar before setting off around the track in wild celebration.
It was the 12th world record of his career and the fourth time he had set one at a Wanda Diamond League meeting. Yet few will have meant as much to him as this one, in front of what he later called “my Swedes”.
“I wanted this so bad,” he said afterwards. “I feel full to the brim right now. I’ve got a lot of family here. I’m just going to enjoy this, enjoy the moment right now.”
