Super vault by Duplantis
BERLIN: Armand Duplantis, another of Scandinavia’s phenomenal young athletics talents, brought down the curtain on a breakthrough European Championships with a record-breaking triumph in one of the all-time great pole vault competitions on Sunday.
The US-raised Swedish teenager became the youngest man ever to clear six metres as he set three world junior records, finishing with a remarkable new mark of 6.05 metres.
On another splendid night of athletics, Dina Asher-Smith become only the third woman to win the European sprint treble as Britain’s men and women both roared to victory in the concluding 4x100m relays.
The Olympic Stadium saluted Poland’s matchless 33-year-old hammer thrower Anita Wlodarczyk, who won her fourth successive title with a championship record of 78.94 metres, and 34year-old Portuguese Nelson Evora, the triple jump winner almost 10 years to the week since he leapt to Olympic gold in Beijing.
Yet it was the youthful mastery of Duplantis that caused most astonishment as, at 18 years and 275 days, he became the youngest man to win a field event in European Championships history.
It came just two days after the equally astounding Jakob Ingebrigtsen, of Norway, who took both the 1,500m and 5,000m, became the youngest men’s track champion in the Championships’ 84-year annals at 17.
The new pole vault champion broke his records, and raised his personal best by 12 centimetres, while under the toughest pressure in one of the best vault competitions ever seen.
The silver medallist, Russian Timur Morgunov, who had been cleared to compete as an Authorised Neutral Athlete, also joined the six-metre club while world record holder Renaud Lavillenie cleared 5.95m.
Duplantis, a phenomenon since he started learning to vault at the age of four in his back garden in Louisiana, cleared his world junior records of 5.95, 6.00 and 6.05 metres at the first attempt.
“6.05 is the jump of my life. It was such an unreal competition, I feel like I’m dreaming right now. It’s been one of the most special moments of my life and I’ll never forget it,” said Duplantis, who has now broken 13 world junior records.
“But I wouldn’t have been able to do it without those two pushing me. That was the motivation right there. Each time, I knew if I wanted to win, I had to clear it.”
Dina, taking Britain from fourth to first with a scintillating anchor leg, emulated East Germans Petra Vogt (1969) and Katrin Krabbe (1990) as the only women to achieve the sprint treble.
On another fine night for Britain, Laura Muir kicked for home after just a lap-and-a-half of the 1,500m final, stretched away and then courageously held on down the home straight in 4:02.32 to become the first woman from her country to take the metric mile crown.
Britain and Poland both finished with seven athletics golds but Germany amassed most medals, 19, headed by Gesa-Felicitas Krause’s successful defence of her 3,000m steeplechase title on Sunday, their sixth gold.