Mondo Duplantis’ 12th time breaking the world record in the pole vault goes down as one of his most memorable of the dozen. For the first time, he did it in his home country of Sweden.
“I kept saying that it was the only thing that I was missing in the accolades, I guess you could say, was to break a world record here in Sweden,” he said. “I really wanted to do it so badly. I checked off pretty much everything now.”
Duplantis, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, cleared 6.28 meters (20 feet, 7 inches) on his first attempt at a Diamond League meet at the 1912 Olympic Stadium in Stockholm.
“The first time I jumped in this stadium when I was 11 years old, it was rainy, cold and I jumped right under four meters,” he said, according to the Diamond League. “It was quite high for how young I was.”
On Sunday, he improved on his most recent world record of 6.27 meters set Feb. 28 at an indoor meet in France. Duplantis has increased the world record by one centimeter all 12 times, the first on Feb. 8, 2020.
“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.”
Duplantis, 25, previously broke the record in Poland (twice), Scotland, Serbia (twice in Belgrade), the U.S. (twice in Eugene, Oregon), France (three times, including the Paris Olympics) and China.
He has adopted the same record-breaking strategy as Ukrainian Sergey Bubka, who maximized bonus money by raising the bar one centimeter at a time on many occasions in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Bubka broke the outdoor world record 17 times and the indoor world record 18 times between 1984 and 1994, before World Athletics shifted to one world record combining indoor and outdoor.
Before Duplantis, the world record was 6.16 meters, set by Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie in 2014.
Duplantis has lost just four times since the start of 2020, while racking up more than 70 victories, according to Tilastopaja.org.
The sky is never the limit for @mondohoss600 ⭐️
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) June 15, 2025
He clears 6.28m on his first attempt at @BAUHAUSGALAN to set his 12th world record 🚀#DiamondLeague pic.twitter.com/9BZbTNZANB
