Following the closure of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 a few days ago, I wanted to take a look at the track record of Armand “Mondo” Duplantis, one of the dominant athletes of our times that set a new world record in the pole vault competition with 6.25m. For that purpose I used the website “Track and Field all-time Performances” (maintained since years ago by Peter Larsson).
With the data of all-time men’s best pole vault I plotted the chart below with the best 3,754 jumps (jumps from 5.80m and above) and their dates, highlighting the jumps by Sergey Bubka, Renaud Lavillenie and Duplantis (dark colour for outdoor vaulting, light colour for indoor).
Bubka dominated the sport in the 1980’s and 90’s (first competing for the Soviet Union and later for Ukraine) when he set up to 35 world records (17 outdoor and 18 indoor), won 6 gold medals at the World Championships and 1 at the Olympic Games. Lavillenie also won a gold medal at the Olympics in London and won several World Indoor Championships (among other medals) and set an indoor world record (which was the absolute record for 6 years). Duplantis, competing for Sweden, at the young age of 24 has already won 2 gold medals at the Olympics (Tokyo and Paris) and 2 World Championships (among other medals) and has already set 9 world records (6 outdoors and 3 indoors).
Some comments after looking at the chart:
- Bubka holds 249 of the 3,754 jumps (6.6%) at 5.80m and above
- Lavillenie holds 271 of the 3,754 jumps (7.2%) at 5.80m and above
- Duplantis holds 259 of the 3,754 jumps (6.9%) at 5.80m and above
- Of those jumps of 6.00m and above (222 jumps):
- Bubka holds 46 of the 222 jumps (20.7%) at 6.00m and above
- Lavillenie holds 21 of the 222 jumps (9.5%) at 6.00m and above
- Duplantis holds 86 of the 222 jumps (38.7%) at 6.00m and above
- If we focus at outdoor jumps of 6.00m and above (134 jumps):
- Bubka holds 28 of the 134 jumps (20.9%) at 6.00m and above
- Lavillenie holds 4 of the 134 jumps (3.0%) at 6.00m and above
- Duplantis holds 57 of the 134 jumps (42.5%) at 6.00m and above
- 24 men have vaulted outdoors at 6.00m or above, only Bubka and Duplantis jumped 6.08m or above (7 and 14 times, respectively)
Bubka achieved his best jumps when he was between 27 and 30 years old. Duplantis at his 24 years has already twice as many high jumps as Bubka in his entire career. If Duplantis continues his progression up to 27-30 years of age the best is still to come, something that might have been deemed unbelievable for those of us who witnessed Bubka in his prime, but we are now going through the same dominance yet with higher heights and more pronounced (Sam Kendricks, silver at the Olympics in Paris, achieved 5.95m… 30cm less than Duplantis!).
The Blog by Javier 