LAUSANNE: Armand Duplantis picked up from where he left off at his world record-setting, gold medal-winning showing at the Paris Olympics by dominating the men’s pole vault at the Lausanne Diamond League meet on Wednesday.

The meeting is the first on World Athletics’ elite circuit since the end of the Paris Games. Duplantis defended his Olympic gold in the Stade de France in some style, improving his own world record to 6.25 metres.

In Lausanne, the Swede took part in a City Event held on an esplanade bordering Lac Leman - better known in English as Lake Geneva - 24 hours before the main fare at the Stade Olympique de la Pontaise. The runway was raised off the tiled walkway, with thousands of fans packed in just metres away, the bar and landing mat placed under a circular tarpaulin, big screens allowing yet more passers-by a view of events.

It was once again Duplantis streets ahead of the competition, winning with a best vault of 6.15 metres. “I’m really happy about it. I had a really good time. It was really nice to step out on the track,” Duplantis said. “I don’t want to say that I was worried, but it’s always a bit of a question mark, I guess, the next meet after something like the Olympics, mentally. “The past two weeks, it’s been hard to wake up. Not in a mental way, not in that way, but very tired mentally, just exhausted, even this morning.”

Duplantis said the difference between Olympic gold at the Stade de France and winning a City Event was miles apart, but bizarrely comparable. “My last competition, it was like 75,000 people watching me,” he said.

“But you get such a cool connection with the crowd when they’re so close to you, it’s just more of this personal type of feeling.” Duplantis added: “It’s just a really cool thing. It’s a really amazing thing and I just love these kind of events. “It really is a great thing for our sport and a great thing for pole vaulting.”

Perfect conditions needed

Only the US-born Swede and American Sam Kendricks, the silver medallist in Paris, managed to pass at 5.92m, the next four all seeing their evening’s work come to a halt at 5.82. The bar was raised to 6.00m, Kendricks failing at his first attempt, but Duplantis sailing clear.

The American won 2019 world gold ahead of Duplantis, since when the Swede has dominated the discipline in a manner rarely seen in track and field. Two more failures at the 6m-barrier left just Duplantis in competition, as is so often the case.

The bar went up to 6.15m, to rapturous applause from the crowd massed around the runway. He clipped the bar with his knee on his first attempt, plunging to the mat in disappointment. With six minutes between each vault the allowed time limit, Duplantis took to the runway for his second effort as the wind picked up to complicate matters.

And he stumbled in the run-up, not managing to plant the pole. As he tumbled onto the mat, Duplantis was quick to sit up and flash a thumbs-up. Duplantis went over on his third attempt, setting a new meet record and celebrating like the true competitor he is, ripping his shirt free of his shorts and screaming aloud in triumph. “I felt like after the 6m jump I knew that I had something higher in me,” he said. — AFP