Armand Duplantis will soon enter this year’s WC.
He does it with a high level of self-confidence.
– I know I can jump higher, he says.
There are not many disciplines during this year’s World Athletics Championships that have such a clear gold favorite as pole vault. Armand Duplantis has barely been in a competition for the last three or four years without winning, and he is of course a huge favorite to jump home the only championship gold he still lacks without much competition.
In superform
Duplantis won a long-awaited Olympic gold last year, but he does not yet have any World Cup gold outdoors. And the question is not really whether Mondo will win gold or not – it is whether he will break any records along the way. When he last jumped in Stockholm, during the Bauhaus gala, it became a new outdoor record through the ages.
Armand Duplantis has loaded up with his parents in Louisiana, and came to the World Cup city of Eugene late. But now he’s in place, and it’s a tagged Mondo.
– It’s really fun. It feels like a real World Cup feeling now. I am tagged and feel ready, he says to Radiosporten.
Cheeky greeting
Duplantis has thus chosen a slightly different World Cup upload, but there is nothing wrong with the shape.
– It has been calm. I feel like I’m in great shape. I’m ready to jump high and take the gold. I feel that I have good self-confidence.
And finally, Mondo says that, despite all the world records and outdoor records, he is not finished. He hopes to break another record during this year’s World Cup.
– I do not think so much about what can go wrong. What I do now feels perfectly okay, and I know I can jump higher than I do now, without changing technology. I hope I can give everyone a good show.
READ MORE: Big criticism after Daniel Ståhl’s World Cup miss – now saw the organizer completely: “It will be strange and boring”