Why Mondo Duplantis Picked Sweden Over USA Despite Being Born in Louisiana
Pole vaulter Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis opted to represent Sweden over USA and here's why.
Duplantis set a new world record at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo - the 14th world record of his legendary career.
He cleared 6.30m to win gold in the men's pole vault on Monday.
Duplantis is not only an athletic great but one of Sweden's best-ever athletes given his continued success on the world stage.
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But the 25-year-old could have represented USA considering he was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, United States.
He graduated from Lafayette High School in 2018 and attended Louisiana State University, but he left in 2019 after his first year in order to turn professional.
So why wasn't he wearing red, white and blue of the United States?
Duplantis has an American father, Greg Duplantis, and a Swedish mother, Helena, but an intervention of a Swedish youth coach stopped him from representing USA.
His old brother Andreas Duplantis was already competing for the Swedish national team in the pole vault.
Duplantis originally wanted to represent Team USA until Swedish youth coach Jonas Anshelm offered Greg a job for the national track and field team.
"We’re on. We’ll go for Sweden," said Greg.
In 2022, Anshelm explained: "He was jumping higher than the most senior jumpers in Sweden at the age of 14, so I didn’t have to see a video or something.
"I definitely wanted to have him in the team. So, that’s when it started."
He added: "As a Swede, and a bit stubborn, maybe stupid, I thought, well I might give him another call.
"What I did mention was that I was very happy if [his father] Greg would like to be in the national team as a coach. A couple weeks later, Greg called me up and said 'We’re on. We’ll go for Sweden'."
Why Armand Duplantis only improves his world record by 1cm at a time
On every occasion Duplantis has broken the world record, he has done so by a single centimetre every time.
In pole vault, athletes can choose the height at which they wish to enter the competition and will get three attempts to clear it.
They then have free rein to decide their next height after each clearance, so his very specific record-breaking exploits are entirely of his own choosing.
After he won gold at the 2024 Olympics in Paris last summer, Forbes reported that each athlete receives $100,000 when they break the world record.
That sum is paid out every time the world record is broken, so Duplantis is in line to bag another cool $100,000 following his world record-setting performance in Japan.
Topics: Athletics
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