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The World’s Best Pole-Vaulter Gets More Swedish as He Goes
Mondo Duplantis has a world record and a good chance at Olympic gold. But he’s endeared himself to Sweden (his mother’s home country) by buying into its culture.
TOKYO — Mondo Duplantis was a high school freshman when his life changed.
A pole-vaulting prodigy from Lafayette, La., Duplantis was a couple of months from his first international competition, the 2015 world youth championships, when he received a recruiting call from a coach. The twist was that the coach was from the Swedish Athletics Association.
“He would call me and my parents every day going, ‘You should compete for Sweden, we’re super well-organized, we’re going to take care of your poles, we’re going to do everything for you,’ ” Duplantis recently recalled. “It sounded like a pretty good offer.”
Duplantis has since emerged as one of Sweden’s most beloved athletes, endearing himself to a once-skeptical public by speaking Swedish in interviews, driving Swedish cars, buying a place to live in Sweden during the summer and dating a Swedish model, Desiré Inglander. The two made headlines when they kissed on live TV in early July at a track meet in Stockholm. (Duplantis won.)
“I think today he’s fully embraced,” said Lisa Gunnarsson, 21, a native of Stockholm and one of Duplantis’s training partners. “If I say I pole-vault, people say, ‘Oh, yes, Mondo Duplantis.’”
Mondo Duplantis has a world record and a good chance at Olympic gold. But he’s endeared himself to Sweden (his mother’s home country) by buying into its culture.
TOKYO — Mondo Duplantis was a high school freshman when his life changed.
A pole-vaulting prodigy from Lafayette, La., Duplantis was a couple of months from his first international competition, the 2015 world youth championships, when he received a recruiting call from a coach. The twist was that the coach was from the Swedish Athletics Association.
“He would call me and my parents every day going, ‘You should compete for Sweden, we’re super well-organized, we’re going to take care of your poles, we’re going to do everything for you,’ ” Duplantis recently recalled. “It sounded like a pretty good offer.”
Duplantis has since emerged as one of Sweden’s most beloved athletes, endearing himself to a once-skeptical public by speaking Swedish in interviews, driving Swedish cars, buying a place to live in Sweden during the summer and dating a Swedish model, Desiré Inglander. The two made headlines when they kissed on live TV in early July at a track meet in Stockholm. (Duplantis won.)
“I think today he’s fully embraced,” said Lisa Gunnarsson, 21, a native of Stockholm and one of Duplantis’s training partners. “If I say I pole-vault, people say, ‘Oh, yes, Mondo Duplantis.’”