Very few athletes enjoy the prestige of breaking a world record in their chosen track or field event. But very occasionally, a superstar comes along who appears to be able to break world records almost whenever the fancy takes them. Swedish-American pole vaulting sensation Armand Duplantis is one such athlete.
On 12th August 2025, at the Hungarian Grand Prix at the National Athletics Centre in Budapest, Duplantis broke his own record to set a new high of 6.29 metres (that’s 20ft, 7½in, in old money!). It was the 13th time he’s broken the pole vault record, and the untouchable Swede surely isn’t done yet. He’s already gone way higher than the legendary Ukrainian pole vaulter, Sergey Bubka. But the great Bubka – who competed for the Soviet Union and then Ukraine – broke the world record a total of 17 times, so Duplantis has a target to aim for.
Who Is Armand Duplantis?
For those who haven’t been following athletics too closely in recent years, we’ll quickly run through how “Mondo” Duplantis has risen to become one of the most dominant athletes on the planet. Duplantis was born in 1999 (yep, that makes us feel very old!) in Lafayette, Louisiana. His American father, Greg Duplantis, was a very decent pole vaulter himself, while his Swedish mother was a heptathlete who also played volleyball. It was no surprise, then, when Mondo began to show plenty of sporting promise. He took to the pole vault much earlier than most, at the age of just four. He then began setting age group records, and it soon became apparent he could develop into a special athlete.
After setting national high school records in the USA, Mondo began to compete more widely and decided to represent Sweden rather than the USA. His older brother had competed for Sweden at pole vault at youth level and had a positive experience, which might have swayed him. His first competition for Sweden was the 2015 World Youth Championships, which he won with a vault of 5.30m (which would have been a senior world record as recently as 1966 – see below).
The Only Way Was Up for Mondo
Duplantis wasted little time in securing his position as the leading light in the junior ranks, and in February 2017, he broke the world indoor junior record with a vault of 5.75m. The bar kept rising and Mondo kept rising to new challenges, setting a new U20 world record of 5.90m in April 2018. It also gave Duplantis the Swedish senior record. He then won the 2018 World U20 Championship title before clearing 6.00m for the first time with a vault of 6.05m at the European Athletics Championships in Berlin. Not only was he the youngest vaulter in history to clear 6.00m, he was the youngest man ever to win a field event at the European Athletics Championships.
He turned pro in 2019 and took silver at the World Championships in Doha that year when he cleared 5.97m at his third time of asking. Then, in 2020, he set his sights on the world record. After a couple of near misses, Duplantis set a new world mark of 6.17m on 8th February 2020, breaking the 6.16m record set by Frenchman Renard Lavillenie, which had stood for almost six years.
Since then, Mondo has broken the record in 1cm increments at regular intervals. He could obviously have extended the record by more each time, but with a cash bonus for every new world record, it makes financial sense to keep edging it up. The pole vault is different to every other event in track and field, aside from the high jump, in that participants have total control over what they can or cannot achieve. With Duplantis getting extra prize money at events for a world record, as well as significant bonuses and boosts from his commercial endorsements, he has really been cashing in over the past few years.
That said, he’s won plenty of bling in that time too, with two Olympic gold medals, two World Championship golds (to add to the aforementioned silver), three golds at the World Indoor Championships, four Diamond League triumphs, three European Championships… the list goes on. And, given Mondo is still only 25 at the time of writing, we expect the list of achievements will grow significantly in the coming years.
How Has the Pole Vault World Record Progressed Over the Years?
If he’s not your 🐐, we don’t know who would be.@mondohoss600 has cleared the height of 6+ meters 60 times already by the age of 23.
The second most clearances of at least 6 meters is 46, which Sergey Bubka reached at the age of 33 in 1997.#GeauxTigers pic.twitter.com/rVHiTqc43f
— LSU Track & Field (@LSUTrackField) March 21, 2023
Although some might see the pole vault as a rather strange event, it has a long history that goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. But in terms of world records in the event, the first recorded goes back to October 1849 when a certain British athlete called Francis Temple cleared a height of 3.15m at a venue in Woolwich.
Brits would rule the skies for several years after that, with the likes of Edwin Woodburn, Thomas Ray (who set the record 10 times in total) and Ernest Stones setting new marks between the initial record at the latter part of the 19th century. Then the event got a much more international feel.
The first non-Brit to hold the world record was Raymond Clapp from the USA, who set a height of 3.62m in June 1898 in Chicago. Fellow American Marc Wright was the first to clear 4.00m in June 1912. It would be 61 years before anyone got over the 5.00m mark. It was another American, Brian Sternberg, who achieved that in 1963 in Philadelphia, after which the record was broken regularly as pole technology and advances in training methods moved things on.
The world had to wait for a true athletics legend to push the bar higher than 6.00m. Sergey Bubka had already achieved three world records (5.85m, 5.88m and 5.90m) when Frenchman Thierry Vigneron edged past him with a vault of 5.91m to claim the world record on 31st August 1984… for a few minutes at least, before Bubka surpassed that mark by 3cm straight after him.
The great Ukrainian went on to break 6.00m the following year and then pushed the event to new heights, literally. His 17th and final world record was 6.14m, which he set in Sestriere in 1994. That stood for almost 20 years, before the aforementioned Lavillenie went 2cm higher. And since then, it’s been all about Mondo Duplantis. We wouldn’t like to guess how high he can go, but we certainly think he’s got plenty more world records left in him.