‘Not a big numbers guy’: Armand Duplantis explains his pole vault mindset | More sports News
Mumbai: Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis is the man who keeps rewriting the numbers in pole vault. ‘Numbers’ is putting it very lightly. They’re World Records, and he has set 13 of them. But ask him about the one number everyone wants to know, his ultimate limit, and he shrugs it off. “I’m not a big numbers guy… I don’t really care about limits,” he says. “I know there’s more to come, and I’m going to keep pushing it.” It’s not false modesty. It’s the way the 25-year-old operates. Living in the present, chasing the perfect jump, not the statistic. “I try to maximise and achieve the most that I can in the now,” he said during an interaction with world media on Thursday. “I think about it a lot less than you would probably imagine.” Fresh from another world record, 6.29m in Budapest, Duplantis sounds as if he has already moved on. “I feel really good,” he says. “Of course, I’m showing that I’m in good shape and everything’s going as I would like for it at this time of the season. Super happy about the jam in Budapest. It was a super amazing night for me.” There’s no long bask in the glory. “I just have this real internal drive and motivation that I just want to keep being better,” he says. That drive comes with what he calls “short-term memory loss” about his achievements. “I probably don’t soak in and forget my accomplishments too quickly. It takes a few days and then I just forget what I did and then I just start looking towards the next thing,” he says. “I always figure out a way to make new goals and look forward. And it becomes probably even quicker and quicker now too.” This constant reset is, in his mind, simply “the way that I’m built… I just always look forward in that kind of way.”Tokyo dreams Breaking a world record doesn’t come with instant calm. “It’s always a bit difficult to find that deep sleep cycle after a world record because of the excitement and what not,” he admits. “But no, I feel really good… just trying to keep pushing forward.” That push is now aimed at Tokyo, the city where he won his first Olympic gold in 2021, in front of empty stands. “I’m super excited to go back to the stadium that I won my first Olympic gold… this time with fans,” he says, talking about the World Championships in Tokyo next month.
