For once, Armand Duplantis has actually been in a fight. The Swede vaulted 6.21m in Lausanne on Thursday evening for a new meeting record, five centimeters clear of Karalis in a Wanda Diamond League contest neither man will forget in a hurry.
The vault was staged on Place de la Navigation, a street event on the Lake Geneva shore on the eve of Friday’s stadium Athletissima meeting. The Greek was the reason Duplantis had to go there at all.
Both vaulters cleared 6.01m with untouched cards and both passed at 6.11m to move straight to 6.16m. Duplantis cleared it on his first attempt to add a centimetre to his own meeting record from 2024, before Karalis matched him on his second. Duplantis then went up to 6.21m and made that on his first try to force Karalis into chasing.
Karalis chased. He was over the bar at 6.21m, only to clip it on the way down. Then he tried again and did the same thing.
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That is a competition. Karalis’s 6.16m is his second-best clearance ever, one centimetre shy of the 6.17m he vaulted at the Greek Indoor Championships in Athens in early March, a mark that moved him past Renaud Lavillenie and up to second on the all-time list.
“I’m tired, that’s what I am!” Duplantis said.
“That was just an amazing competition, I really had to step it up. That’s competition, that’s what we live for.”
The 6.32m world record attempt
With the win sealed, Duplantis let the bar go up to 6.32m, one centimeter above his own world record of 6.31m set at the Mondo Classic in Uppsala in March. He clipped it twice, called it a night, and passed on the chance at a sixteenth world record.
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Karalis is no longer the sideshow
Karalis has not just followed Duplantis up the list, he is starting to make it a two-man event. According to World Athletics, his 6.16m added ten centimetres to the previous best-ever non-winning mark in the discipline.
“It’s been amazing. I always love competing here,” Karalis said. “Being able to jump my highest ever bar here is incredible.”
Kurtis Marschall finished third at 5.91m, roughly 25 centimetres below Karalis and 30 below Duplantis. Sondre Guttormsen and Chris Nilsen also cleared 5.91m, taking fourth and fifth on countback.
Duplantis is entered for the Weltklasse Zürich Wanda Diamond League meeting on 27 August, where he will headline the pole vault again. The circuit then closes with the two-day Diamond League Final in Brussels on 4-5 September.
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