Mondo Duplantis breaks pole vault world record in Belgrade

Mondo Duplantis has done it again.

Sweden's Olympic pole vault champion cleared 6.19m to add one centimetre to his own world record set in Glasgow in February 2020 on Monday (7 March) at the World Indoor Tour Silver meeting in Belgrade.

Competing in the same arena which will host the World Athletics Indoor Championships at the end of next week, Duplantis had first-time clearances at 5.61m, 5.85m and 6.00m before raising the bar to the new record height.

He failed with his first two attempts, after several unsuccessful tries at previous competitions, but finally made it at the third time of asking despite moving the bar with his knees.

Afterwards he said, "I think I've tried 6.19m 50 times, I think that was the number. It's been a long time coming. I've never had a height quite give me the trouble like that in my entire life and I've been jumping for a very long time, so it's a very good feeling. It was really hard fought these past two years to get over that next barrier and so I'm really happy.

"I don't think this is the highest I'm ever going to jump. There's going to be a lot more to come. This is a really good place to jump. World Championships in two weeks is going to be an even better time to try to put something else higher up there. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited to come back to Belgrade."

This is the fourth world record of 22-year-old Duplantis's career.

His first came in February 2020 when he surpassed London 2012 gold medallist Renaud Lavillenie's world record by clearing 6.17m in Torun, Poland before improving that the following week in Glasgow.

In September of that year, he cleared 6.15m at the Rome Diamond League meeting to eclipse Sergey Bubka's outdoor pole vault world best of 6.14m set in Sestriere in July 1994.

And judging by what he said after his latest historic feat, it will certainly not be the last.