Photo: Bildbyrån
The Uppsala residents hoped to celebrate their golden calf Armand Duplantis after this summer’s Olympic gold, but the municipality said no to such a specific celebration.
Now comes new news: “Mondo” can certainly meet the people’s cheers in town. Together with other successful, local athletes.
That the Uppsala track and field athlete Armand “Mondo” Duplantis24, took home an Olympic gold in the pole vault was nothing that surprised anyone. He also broke both the Olympic and world records when he soared over the bar on his final jump.
Ever since “Mondo” salvaged the gold, the people in the former “home town” of Uppsala have wanted to bring him there to be able to pay tribute to him properly. Admittedly, his club Upsala IF plans to celebrate him on October 1 – but the city has been crying out for a grander event.
The municipality has said no before
The idea of a specific celebration of Duplantis has previously been shot down by the municipality. They have not wanted to value his medal in the Olympics as “more important” than other medals won by local Uppsala athletes or teams.
– We are extremely proud of Armand Duplantis and he really puts Uppsala on the map. But this issue is bigger. What are we supposed to celebrate? As a municipality, we should not value sports against each other. We do not want to claim that a good performance in soccer is greater than a good performance in judo, for example, has Karolin Lundström (V)chairman of the sports and leisure committee, previously told UNT.
Later the sports director came Magnus Jansson with a new twist on the matter. He said that a joint celebration of several different athletes will be held in the City Hall in December. Senior athletes from Uppsala who during the year won medals at the SM, EC, WC or Olympics. They will be invited to lunch or dinner.
Planning something bigger
Now comes a further twist in the matter. It does not seem at all that it will only be a “closed” dinner for invited people. The municipality is also investigating whether they can arrange a larger celebration where the locals can meet their sporting heroes.
– The idea is that, if there will be a dinner or lunch that is more festive, we also want to have a public thing where you can get an autograph and meet the sports stars. Planning is underway and we politicians do not get involved exactly, but we have said that we want to have a celebration and re-establish a tradition where sporting achievements are annually celebrated, explains the chairman of the municipal board Eric Pelling (S) for UNT.
READ MORE: The entire sports world is talking about the clip of 10-year-old Mondo Duplantis – after the star won Olympic gold and broke a new world record
He regrets that people have misunderstood the municipality’s previous statements as saying that there would be no celebration at all for Armand Duplantis. They have never reasoned that way.
– I think we talked past each other. We need to highlight sporting achievements and it is clear that they should be celebrated. But that someone would get a big celebration while others didn’t get a celebration… we can’t have that inequality. Then it’s not often we get an Olympic star and it will be the sun everything revolves around this time, but another time it could be different, he says.
Clearly “Mondo” will be celebrated in Uppsala. He deserves it and the people deserve it. They want to pay tribute to their hero, Sweden’s number 1 gold jumper!
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