Mondo Duplantis’s PR Progression, From 5-6 To 19-5½
July 2018by T&FN
Mondo reached his all-time high of 19-5½ with room to spare on this vault. (BRYAN WAYNE)
It’s always fun to look at an athlete’s progression of marks, but rarely do we get to see something as detailed as this one for vault prodigy Mondo Duplantis. The Duplantis family—specifically grandfather Bob—has charted his career very well, and in conjunction with numbers from T&FN’s HS Editor Jack Shepard, here’s the Louisiana star’s 55-entry chart of PRs, starting at age 6. Note that age 6 was the last one where—so far, at least—he failed to vault his age. He vaulted his age at 7 and at least a foot over his age at 8 on up, with 2-foot figures coming in for 10, 15, 16 & 17. He still has a chance to do a 2-footer for 18, but we suspect that even with his marvelous talents that a 2-footer at 19 is out of the question!
In the prog, metric marks to 3 decimal places were heights measured in English that don’t have a 2-digit equivalent on the Big Gold Book conversion tables. (A) = mark made at more than 1000m altitude; I = indoor mark. The chart:
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