TThe best pole vaulter in, say, the United States can walk into any crowded downtown square and go completely unnoticed. Armand “Mondo” Duplantis of Sweden cannot enjoy such anonymity in his country. To be fair, Duplantis isn’t just Sweden’s best pole vaulter. He is the best in the world and, in fact, the best to ever launch himself 6 meters into the air to clear a bar, having broken the world record on eight different occasions.
Still, we’re talking about pole vaulting here. It is not football, basketball, cricket, rugby, tennis or any of the other most popular and globally popular endeavors. So Mondo-mania is something to behold. American Chris Nilsen was in Stockholm with a small group of pole vaulters for a competition last year, and someone asked Duplantis if he wanted to go out for a cup of coffee. “He immediately got nervous,” says Nilsen, the Olympic silver medalist – behind Duplantis – in the Tokyo Olympics. “Heat and sweat on your face. And we were like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’” Duplantis asked the group to bring him black coffee; When they left, they soon understood why Duplantis decided to sit out this trip. He would be harassed.
“We see that there are several Mondo billboards outside the hotel,” says Nilsen. “There are Mondo signs in coffee shops. Everyone knows who he is. It would be like Tom Cruise walking down Main Street.”
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Nilsen compares him to Usain Bolt. Another jumper calls him the Patrick Mahomes of his nation. What about LeBron James from Sweden? “It sounds really strange to say it like that, but in a way, yes,” Duplantis, 24, said during a mid-July video interview in Stockholm, where he was preparing for Paris.
Just a few days earlier, for example, Duplantis – who was born in the United States to an American pole vaulter father and a Swedish heptathlete mother – ventured out. A group of teenagers, looking for selfies, besieged him. “A lot of times, at the grocery store or something, I’ll just randomly start a conversation with someone,” says Duplantis. “Then I realize they definitely know who I am. You think you may have met someone you don’t know. They almost always do this.
Fortunately, strangers are mostly respectful when he’s out and about. “Unless they’re drunk,” he says. “Then it becomes different. They have the courage to be with me a little longer.”
Sweden has exported sports stars before: Bjorn Borg, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Annika Sorenstam, to name a few notables. And now Mondo Duplantis, who World Athletics, athletics’ global governing body, has named athlete of the year three times since 2020. He has been nominated, along with Lionel Messi, Novak Djokovic, Erling Haaland, Noah Lyles and Max Verstappen, for the prestigious Laureus World Sportsman of the Year award for 2024 (Djokovic won). This is an impressive company.
Duplantis earns between $30,000 and $100,000 each time he sets a new world record. Then he strategically raises the bar by a single inch to break it whenever he can. “I think I’d be lying if I didn’t say that’s part of it,” Duplantis says of the financial considerations.
He first broke Renaud Lavillenie’s record of France, 6.16 m (20 ft 2 ½ in), in Poland in February 2020, when he surpassed 6.17 m (20 ft 2 ½ in). His latest milestone: in China in April this year, Duplantis jumped 6.24 m (20 ft 5 ½ in).
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Duplantis can legitimately claim to be the best Olympian in the world. Only Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles, perhaps, dominate their sports like him. “Out of 10,000 athletes, this is the one that, if we were having a milkshake, I would bet a milkshake on him to be the gold medalist,” says NBC Olympics host Mike Tirico. The pole vault final will be on August 5, and thanks to his American connections – he grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, and attended LSU, where he was friends with sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson for a year – and his greatness of all time, expect NBC and networks from around the world to grow Mondo.
“If I tell you that the best cellist of all time is on the corner of 50th and 6th, let’s walk around and watch him,” says Tirico of Studio 8H in Rockefeller Plaza during NBC’s presentation to Olympic media at the June’s end. “So if I’m telling the public that the best of all time in pole vaulting will be competing tonight, a lot of people will stay to watch, regardless of nation.”
Dupantis refuses to generate headlines by declaring himself the most dominant Olympian you will see in Paris. “It’s difficult for me to compare apples and oranges,” says the Swedish diplomat. Although he’s not coy when he’s told that at least one idiot in the media is prepared to make a case. “I appreciate it,” Duplantis responds.
He started pole vaulting when he was around 4 years old, in the backyard of his home in Lafayette, where his father set up a track, box, bar and mat. “I was so obsessed with it from the beginning,” says Duplantis. Having that immediate access to the sport “gave me a good boost, for sure,” he says.
The name of a 2022 documentary about his life is Born to Fly. “When I’m doing everything right and everything is working and I feel like I’m jumping really, really well, it’s like I’m in control of everything in such a cool, crazy way,” says Duplantis. “I’m doing this dance almost with the pole. I have such a good feeling about it. We are one, in a way.”
Duplantis spent summers in Sweden as a child. His seven-year-old older brother, Andreas, represented the country in international competitions. So it was no surprise that when Mondo was a junior in high school, Sweden approached him. Competing for Sweden offered some practical benefits: the nerve center of the sport is in Europe, where most of the major competitions are held. Furthermore, he could avoid the punitive Olympic trials system that persists in the United States. American high jumper KC Lightfoot, who cleared 6.07 m (19 ft 11 in) in 2023 to set a new American record, was eliminated in the first round at the US trials in Eugene, Oregon, this year. He’s not going to the Olympics.
Plus, he’s a standout in Sweden, as opposed to another niche athlete in the United States, who tends to reserve his idolization for basketball and football players. Duplantis’ sponsors include Puma, Omega, Swedish electric car manufacturer Polestar, a Swedish dental chain called Aqua Dental, and CapitalBox, a fintech company.
Since moving to Sweden after his year at LSU, Duplantis has improved his Scandinavian street cred by embracing his heritage. He described his language skills as “survival Swedish” before the Tokyo Olympics, but says he is “solid” now.
“I just had a cool Louisiana American accent, which is pretty unusual here,” says Duplantis.
He drives polar stars. Although he hasn’t found Cajun food in Sweden, he likes the Swedish flavor of lobster. “You boil it, refrigerate it, and eat it cold,” says Duplantis. “And you dive into this special kind of water. The fish is more salty, flavorful and fresh, rather than heavily seasoned and battered.
His relationship with Desire Englander, a Swedish model and influencer, has also raised his profile. In recent months, the couple has appeared on Vogue Scandinavia and cuddling in a wooded area of Stockholm and also in an athletics stadium, in front of the Roman Coliseum, on a private plane and in other exotic-looking locations, according to the enviable images they posted on Instagram. “The teen age group is what I’ve really learned about over the last two years,” Duplantis says. “Des and I.”
With another world record, this time in Paris, he will gain even more followers – of all ages, all over the world. “The Olympics bring completely new perspectives to sport,” says Duplantis. “Go out and do something special, do something that has never been done before. That is the goal. And I feel confident about that.”
LeBron. Simone. Sha’Carri. Some Olympic athletes only require one name.
Why not World?
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
