Pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis soared roughly a foot higher than the silver and bronze medalists. And he kept setting the bar higher, breaking the world record.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s Mondo Duplantis. Yesterday, in case you missed this, the pole vaulter went full Superman in Paris, soaring roughly a foot higher than the silver and bronze medalists.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
That’s right. Once the gold was guaranteed, it was just Duplantis versus the bar. And he kept setting it higher, first breaking the Olympic record…
KELLY: And then breaking the world record, which he himself had set earlier this year.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MONDO DUPLANTIS: I guess I’ve been fortunate enough to do it several times now.
KELLY: The 24-year-old tried to capture that record-breaking feeling at a press conference right after the jump.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DUPLANTIS: When I’m going over with the bar, it’s just like – it doesn’t feel real in a way, so that was more just kind of hysteria and just freaking out.
CHANG: The Louisiana-born athlete competes for his mother’s native Sweden. He took gold in Tokyo, too, and he has now broken the world record an astonishing nine times.
KELLY: But just by a single centimeter each of those times because, with each broken record, he reportedly earns tens of thousands of dollars.
CHANG: And with that incentive, Duplantis might be tempted to raise the bar again.
KELLY: But just by a teeny fit.
(SOUNDBITE OF BARBARA ACKLIN SONG, “AM I THE SAME GIRL”)
Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.