A week after kicking off his Olympic year with a bang with a new world record of 6.24m, pole vaulting phenom Armand Duplantis has his sights set on continuing to reach heights at the Diamond League meeting in Suzhou, China, this SATURDAY.
“If I could jump higher tomorrow (Saturday) than I did last weekend, it would be crazy,” drools the Olympic champion, two-time world champion and two-time reigning European champion. “It’s obviously very nice to start your outdoor season with a world record. I know I’m in really good shape, I knew that when I came (to China), but you never know if the technique and everything else will match your form,” Duplantis, 24, explained in a press release on the eve of the conference. meeting organized near Shanghai.
Margin… And ambition
“That was the case in Xiamen (last Saturday), so I know I can jump really high now,” he continues. I expect a similar result of jumping really high tomorrow if the conditions remain as good as expected. »
A week ago at the start of the Diamond League, the most prestigious circuit in world athletics, Duplantis cleared 6.24m on his first attempt. Not without a considerable margin of several centimeters: five, according to estimates provided by the organization.
It is the eighth time in four years that ‘Mondo’ has broken the pole vault world record since he knocked out France’s Renaud Lavillenie (6.17m to 6.16m) in February 2020 “I don’t go to meets just to jump, they do everything is very important to me and I want to jump really high. Every time I’m at the end of the track, I want to try to do my best. At every opportunity, I want to jump as high as possible,” insists the Swedish champion.
His competition is himself
If Duplantis identifies an “excess” of motivation in the biggest competitions, “in an Olympic year, all the pre-Olympic competitions become more important, we put more intensity into them,” he describes.
More than the Americans who know what it’s like to fly over six meters, Sam Kendricks and Chris Nilsen, the star pole vaulter born in the United States is competing with himself. “It’s not a completely new situation, it’s been like this for a few years, it’s something you get used to,” notes the pole vaulting phenomenon, whose origins date back to winning European gold in 2018, aged 18 flight.
“I’m in the position I’m in for a reason: I’ve been jumping really well, really high, so people expect even higher bars in the future. That suits me because I expect it from myself, he continues. I have a lot of confidence in my abilities. I want to continue to jump high and break the world record as much as possible.