Getty Image / Mattia Ozbut
The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France are less than three weeks away, and buzz around the world is heating up. One of the athletes you may not know now but will become a household name soon enough is pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis.
While Duplantis doesn’t compete for Team USA, he was born and raised in Louisiana and has been a phenomenon since he was a kid. He competes for Sweden, the nationality of his mother.
If you keep up with track and field news, you’ve been hearing about this kid for a long time. Simply put, Mondo Duplantis is a pole vaulting prodigy. As a youngster, he broke the age group world record at every age from 7-12. That dominance has carried over to his senior career, as he captured the Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021 at just 21-years-old and has broken the world record seven times, six of those times being his own world record.
Mondo Duplantis took to the track for what is likely his final meet before Paris, and while he didn’t set a world record, he looked to be in tip-top form heading into the Olympics.
Mondo Duplantis gets it done in Paris. 😤
Reigning Olympic and world champion @mondohoss600 clears 6 meters in the men's pole vault for the win at #ParisDL. pic.twitter.com/vXMeZTVk0c
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 7, 2024
I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen elite pole vaulting live, but that is wildly high. That’s a 20-foot vault, equivalent to the height of two basketball hoops. The amount of power, speed, coordination, and timing to do that is insane.
The Men’s Pole Vault final is scheduled for August 5 in Paris, and the whole world should be watching one of the most dominant athletes on the planet in Mondo Duplantis.