“I am exactly where I planned to be, I like my start to the season so far,” commented Swedish pole vaulting master Armand Duplantis on Monday evening in Ostrava (Czech Republic). A few months after breaking his own world record (6.22 m in Clermont-Ferrand in February), the 23-year-old Swede started his summer season well with competitions completed at 5.91 m (Los Angeles at the end of May), 6.11 m (Hengelo in early June) then 6.01 m in Oslo mid-June. “I’m in good shape, I’m fast, powerful, quite technically developed… Everything I hoped for,” he continued at a press conference.
Olympic champion in Tokyo in 2021, Duplantis hopes to win a second outdoor world title this summer in Budapest (August 19-27), a year after that of Eugene (United States). “It’s not a discipline where you fight against others. You have to climb high to cross a bar regardless of its height. (The pole) is a challenge against myself”, he detailed about his relationship to his discipline, which he has crushed for three years.
“I already felt like that before becoming the best in the world, it has always been my approach to each competition. It doesn’t matter what your next competitor is doing, it’s just a competition between me and the bar.”