It’s Mondo’s world

Sure, I am being hyperbolic — but he is certainly having a moment.

Armand Gustav “Mondo” Duplantis, the 24-year old Swedish-American pole vaulter who won the Olympic gold for pole vault in the recent Paris Olympics has broken the world record ten times. After he effortlessly cleared the height of 6.25 meters in the Olympics, he cleared 6.26 meters in the Silesia Diamond League just the other week.

He also holds the indoor record at 6.22 meters.

While our beloved Ernesto “EJ” Obiena has made great strides in the sport, it is unlikely that Duplantis will be unseated as the king of pole vault soon.

With such stellar accomplishments, we would not be surprised that out of sheer boredom, he indulged Norwegian track star Karsten Warholm in an exhibition 100-meter race in Zurich, Switzerland the other day.

Warholm competes in the 400-meter run and 400-meter hurdles.

He won the gold in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic champion, and silver in the Paris Olympics. He is a three-time world champion and world record holder in the 400-meter hurdles. In 2021, he was voted World Athletics Male Athlete of the Year.

Despite Warholm’s solid credentials, more people still bet on Duplantis winning the race based on an Instagram poll. While Warholm is the official sprinter, we should not overlook the fact that pole vaulting involves sprinting as well.

The first phase in pole vaulting is what is called the approach.

The pole vaulter has to sprint down the runway in such a way as to achieve maximum speed and correct position to initiate at the end of the approach.

Speed is important to efficiently translate the kinetic energy accumulated from the approach into potential energy stored by the elasticity of the pole, and to gain as much initial vertical height as possible by jumping off the ground.

Duplantis himself noted that his pole vault run-ups are essentially 45 meter sprints. This is why he says he trains “like a sprinter” and only vaults once a week.

Warholm certainly did not take the challenge for granted. To prepare for the friendly, he even sent videos of his block starts to Usain Bolt to get some tips.

Still, Duplantis dominated the race out of the box and finished with a blistering time of 10.37 seconds. For a long-distance recreational runner like I am, the thought that Duplantis could have ran a 1.72-minute kilometer is absolutely mind boggling.

Despite clocking in 10.47 seconds, Warholm still beat his personal best.

It was noted that both Duplantis and Warholm would have qualified for the preliminary round of the men’s 100 meters at the Paris Olympics with their respective times.

But Duplantis' is not yet the fastest time in the distance. The record is held by Justin Gatlin at 9.76 seconds.

Sprinters and athletes in general are getting faster and stronger.

The progression of Olympic standard times proves that. It crept down from 10.21 seconds in the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to 10.16 in the Rio Games eight years later.

Then, sprinters had to run 10.05 seconds to qualify for Tokyo in 2021 and 10.00 seconds was the threshold in Paris.

According to a recent New York Times article, from the start of 2008 to the end of 2016 (encapsulating the Bolt era), there was an annual average of 55 100m times under 10 seconds, with a peak of 91 in 2015, a world championship year.

In the marathon event, had the current record holder, Tamirat Tola, ran against the winner of the 1904 Olympic marathon, he would have won by an hour and a half.

What is happening?

David Epstein, author of the The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, proposed that there are three main reasons for athletes getting faster and stronger.

First is technology. Shoes, gear and equipment have undergone major upgrades since the first Olympics. For instance, running shoes used to be made with leather instead of the high tech rubber materials it is made of today.

Second, the gene pool has immensely improved. In sports where height is prized, athletes have grown taller. And where heft counts, athletes have become heavier and sturdier.

Finally, there has been a noted change of mindset. Because of advances in scientific knowledge, present day athletes know better than to be stymied by old perceptions on the limits of human strength and endurance. Now we know better that the body won’t necessarily be in mortal danger by pushing harder.

Indeed, Mondo is just one of the many epitomes of this leap in human evolution.

But what a great example he is.