Diamond League Final 2024: Mondo Duplantis soars to another win in Brussels
The double world and Olympic champion capped his "beautiful" season with a fourth consecutive Diamond League Trophy.
Pole vault star Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis defied fatigue to cap his "beautiful" 2024 season by collecting a fourth Diamond League Trophy in Brussels on Friday (13 September).
At the Memorial Van Damme meeting, doubling up as the Diamond League Final, Duplantis cleared 6.11m with his first attempt, well ahead of second place Emmanouil Karalis's 5.82m best. The Greek took bronze last month at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 and failed at 5.92m after a previously blemish-free card.
There was a two-way tie for third between Belgian Ben Broeders and USA's Olympic silver medallist Sam Kendricks with both men also clearing 5.82m but having one failure earlier on.
As usual, there were expectations that the peerless Swede might deliver a world record-breaking vault after his latest of 6.26m at the Diamond League in Silesia last month. While Duplantis did not attempt to make history again on Friday, his 6.11m clearance was good enough for a new meeting record.
Afterwards, he revealed that he was still feeling the effects of his 100m victory over 400m hurdles world record holder Karsten Warholm in Zurich last week. He told reporters, "My legs felt terrible tonight and I'm just really tired. It's been a crazy couple of weeks: the race against Karsten and then I had to jump the day after. That took a lot more from my body that I expected.
"With 6.11m, I got a good result but the world record wasn't meant to be tonight. It's not easy to do better each time. Everything needs to come together. I had some good jumps and I'm really happy about that. Now it's time to celebrate my beautiful season: I will drink some good Belgian beers tonight, for sure!"
Result from men's pole vault at Memorial Van Damme (Diamond League Final), Brussels on 13 September 2024:
1. Armand Duplantis (SWE) 6.11m
2. Emmanouil Karalis (GRE) 5.82m
3= Ben Broeder (BEL), Sam Kendricks (USA) 5.82m
5= Thibaut Collet (FRA), Christopher Nilsen (USA) 5.62m
7. KC Lightfoot (USA) 5.62m