The bar sat at 6.30m in Tokyo's National Stadium, higher than any pole vaulter had ever cleared. Armand Duplantis had two narrow misses behind him. On the third attempt he rose, brushed the bar, and left it trembling in place. Duplantis cleared 6.30m on his third attempt to break the pole vault world record and win his third consecutive world title at Tokyo 2025. It was the fourteenth world record of his career, and the gold was already his before the bar ever went that high.
How it was decided
The competition had been settled long before the record. Duplantis' victory in Japan represents his third consecutive outdoor world championships gold, following his victories in 2023 in Budapest and 2022 in Oregon. Only Emmanouil Karalis of Greece stayed with him into the thin air. Karalis was pushed beyond his previous limit in an effort to stay in the competition. He made good but failed attempts at 6.10m and 6.15m, only to watch Duplantis float over each height untroubled. The Greek's first-time clearance at 6.00m earned him silver; Kurtis Marschall of Australia took bronze.
With the title secured and the stadium standing, Duplantis turned to the record alone. With gold already secured, the flying Swede took three attempts to set the new world record, saving the best jump for last after just touching the bar on his previous two at the height. He played the crowd between attempts, calming them after the second miss, then vaulted into their arms once the mark held. In Tokyo's Japan National Stadium, the margin was 30cm as the Swedish supremo broke yet another barrier, becoming the first man to clear 6.30m as he claimed his third world title in four years.
"I feel the only way to leave Japan was to set the world record. That was my mentality."
A return to the same stadium
The venue carried its own weight. The last time that Duplantis competed in this arena, four years ago, he won his first Olympic gold medal with 6.02m, in front of empty grandstands during the Covid-19 pandemic. At that stage, his personal best was 6.10m. Four years on, he returned to a full house and cleared twenty centimetres higher than his old best. Since then, he has taken the pole vault into the stratosphere, lifting the world record from 6.16m to 6.30m.
The trajectory is by now familiar. He broke the record for the first time in Torun in 2020, aged twenty, then won his first outdoor world title in Eugene in 2022 with 6.21m. Budapest followed in 2023. In Paris the next summer he retained his Olympic crown with 6.25m, the first man to defend pole vault gold since 1956. Tokyo added a third world title and a fourteenth record to the ledger. Duplantis is not only raising his own standards year on year, but he is lifting the discipline itself with each centimetre.
He came to Tokyo to jump, and he left it having moved the ceiling once more.
