Ingenious reason Mondo Duplantis has broken the same pole vault world record a staggering 12 times
Duplantis broke the world record for the first time when he cleared 6.17 metres at an indoor meet in Poland in 2020, a year before winning his maiden Olympic gold medal in Tokyo.
Since then meet by meet he breaks it by a centimetre at a time.
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This time he set Stockholm Olympic Stadium, which hosted the Games in 1912, into raptures as he cleared 6.28m.
The 25-year-old whipped off his shirt and kissed his fiancee, Swedish influencer Desiré Inglander, who was watching on from the front row.
'It's a magical feeling,' said Duplantis, who was born and raised in Louisiana but represents Sweden, where his mom is from.
'I wanted this so bad. I wanted to do this in front of everybody here in Stockholm, all my Swedes.'
But many fans were left scratching their heads that he doesn't try and clear a bigger height, given the fact he barely fails on a jump.
Duplantis has incredibly lost just four times since the start of 2020 while racking up more than 70 meet wins.
While his decision to only break the world record 1cm at a time is done for a very deliberate reason.
In the pole vault, athletes can choose the height at which they wish to enter the competition and will get three attempts to clear it.
They then have free rein to pick their next height after each clearance.
And Mondo decides to cash in on his phenomenal ability, by breaking the world record regularly because each time he does so he receives $100,000.
So by just breaking world records, Duplantis has earned a cool $1.2 million over the past five years.
However, there is one restriction – athletes can only be paid the $100,000 reward once per meeting.
Therefore, each time he continues to raise the bar by just one centimetre and at 25 years of age, the sky is the limit for the pole vault phenom.
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