Mondo Duplantis Breaks World Record Again, Announces Plan to Vault Over Bank Vault for Next Trick
How One Man Is Single-Handedly Making Gravity Look Like a Mere Suggestion
In a stunning display of what scientists are calling “complete disregard for the laws of physics,” Swedish-American pole vault phenomenon Armand “Mondo” Duplantis has broken the world record for the 14th time, clearing 6.30 meters at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo while apparently barely breaking a sweat .
The accomplishment has left spectators, competitors, and physicists scratching their heads wondering if someone might eventually tell Duplantis that pole vaulting isn’t actually supposed to be this easy.
Eyewitnesses report that after effortlessly winning his 49th straight meet and fifth straight major title, Duplantis decided to stick around for an extra half hour just to give the Japanese crowd something to remember him by – like becoming the first human being to clear the height of a fully-grown giraffe while carrying a long, flexible stick .
“I feel the only way to leave Japan was to set the world record,” Duplantis told the captivated crowd afterwards, presumably while casually leaning against the still-wobbling crossbar that he had just defied quantum physics to clear. “That was my mentality” .
The Centimeter Millionaire 💰
Financial analysts have calculated that Duplantis has perfected the art of the one-centimeter world record boost, a business model that would make any Silicon Valley startup founder weep with jealousy. For his latest feat, he collected $70,000 for the victory plus a $100,000 bonus for the record , proving that vertical ambition can be quite financially rewarding.
“It’s brilliant when you think about it,” said sports economist Dr. Evelyn Stack. “He’s essentially created a subscription service where we all pay to watch him jump one centimeter higher every few months. I’d call it the ‘Mondo Plus’ premium model.”
The Family Business
Insiders report that the Duplantis household doesn’t actually have doorways like normal families. Instead, they simply vault over walls between rooms, with breakfast conversation consisting of debates about pole flexibility and optimal approach speed .
His father Greg, a former pole vaulter himself, served as coach and cheerleader during the record-breaking jump, telling reporters: “I believe in him. I believed he was going to make it on the last one. You’ve got to believe” . Sources indicate this is the same encouragement he offered when teaching a 4-year-old Mondo to vault over garden furniture in their Louisiana backyard .
Even Duplantis’s younger sister Johanna has joined the family business, turning professional this year and presumably ensuring that future Thanksgiving dinners will feature tense discussions about grip techniques rather than politics .
The Mondo Show 🎪
What separates Duplantis from mere athletic mortals isn’t just his ability to defy gravity – it’s his flair for showmanship. During his Tokyo performance, he:
- Imitated Japanese baseball star Shohei Ohtani’s pose after clearing 6.15m
- Motioned downward to calm the crowd’s emotions when he scraped the bar on his second attempt at 6.30m
- Leaped into the audience after finally breaking the world record
- Shared handshakes and hugs with the competitors he had just thoroughly defeated
“This isn’t just athletics, it’s theater,” observed one spectator. “I paid for a stadium seat but got both a sporting event and a circus performance. The only thing missing was elephants vaulting too.”
The Competitors’ Lament
Fellow competitors have adopted various strategies to cope with the Mondo Era of pole vaulting. Some try to ignore him, some try to learn from him, and some simply accept they’re competing for second place.
Emmanouil Karalis of Greece, who became the fourth best pole vaulter in history this year with 6.08m, still finished a whopping 22 centimeters behind Duplantis . After winning silver, Karalis graciously held a fan for Duplantis between the Swede’s record attempts , perhaps hoping some of that anti-gravity magic might rub off.
Australia’s Kurtis Marschall, who took bronze, could only marvel: “Mondo is from another planet. He is doing incredible things, things many people thought were impossible” . Marschall then reportedly checked if interplanetary competition was governed by World Athletics regulations.
Even former champion Renaud Lavillenie, the 2012 Olympic champion and former world record-holder, has been relegated to the role of “part-time Duplantis mentor” and finished eighth in Tokyo , perhaps wondering when exactly the earth’s gravitational pull increased for everyone but one man.
The Physics of Mondo 🌌
Physicists around the world are struggling to explain the Duplantis phenomenon. Preliminary theories include:
- Special Relativity: Time actually slows down for Duplantis when he’s on the runway, allowing him to achieve greater speed than measured by conventional clocks.
- Anti-Gravity Genes: A mutation possibly caused by growing up with a pole vault pit in his backyard .
- The Swedish-American Fusion Hypothesis: The combination of American ambition and Swedish engineering has created the optimal pole vaulting human.
What we do know is that Duplantis reaches speeds of more than 35 kilometers per hour (22 mph) on his approach , generating enough kinetic energy to power a small neighborhood, or at least clear a bar high enough that most of us would need oxygen masks.
The Future 🔮
With his latest record, Duplantis has now broken the world mark four times in 2025 alone – the most number of times he has improved the mark during a single year . At this rate, mathematicians project he’ll be vaulting over the Eiffel Tower by 2030 and into low Earth orbit by 2035.
The Swedish Olympic Committee and gambling firm Svenska Spel have used artificial intelligence to speculate that Duplantis could eventually hit 6.51m at age 33 , though the AI reportedly short-circuited when trying to calculate an upper limit, simply printing out: “LOL, SKY’S THE LIMIT? NOT FOR THIS DUDE.”
Duplantis himself has suggested that 6.40m would be the “next huge barrier” , though at his current centimeter-by-centimeter rate, this would require approximately 10 more world records, 10 more bonus checks, and countless more defeated competitors.
When asked about his future goals, Duplantis responded with the expected uncertainty of someone whose goals constantly need to change: “I don’t know what is next for me at this moment. I don’t care. I will just enjoy this right now” .
Conclusion: The Inevitability of Mondo
As the track and field world comes to terms with Duplantis’ continued dominance, officials are considering new rules to make the sport more competitive, including:
- Requiring Duplantis to vault with a pool noodle instead of a fiberglass pole
- Having him start his approach from the parking lot
- Making him recite Swedish poetry while in mid-air
Until then, the rest of the pole vault world will continue to compete for second place, collect silver medals, and watch in awe as a man from Louisiana via Sweden continues to redefine what’s physically possible, one centimeter and one paycheck at a time.
The only question that remains is whether humanity will eventually develop technology to measure how high Duplantis can actually go, or if we’ll simply have to point telescopes upward and hope we can spot him as he vaults past the International Space Station.
One thing’s for certain – if there’s a bar to be cleared, Duplantis will find a way over it. And then he’ll ask for it to be raised one centimeter higher.
