The pole-vaulting world-record holder, who won gold in Paris after clearing his own record with a jump of 6.25 meters, was born in the U.S. and went to college at LSU.
The Louisiana native has a Swedish mother and American father, but an intervention by a Swedish youth coach stopped him from wearing the stars and stripes.
“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,” Jonas Anshelm recalled to the Olympics in a 2022 video. “I definitely wanted to have him in the team. So, that’s when it started.”
Duplantis’ older brother, Andreas, was already representing Sweden in the pole vault, so Anshelm tried reaching out through him and was rebuffed. Duplantis wanted to represent the U.S.
“As a Swede, and a bit stubborn, maybe stupid, I thought, well I might give him another call,” Anshelm said. “… 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.’”
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That piece of ingenuity has paid off in droves for the Swedes.
Duplantis is now the two-time consecutive Olympic gold medal winner in the pole vault, with a pair of World Championship golds, a pair of World Indoor Championship golds and a trio of European Championship golds.
He holds the top nine spots on the world record list, and has been the record-holder since February 2020.
Though he wasn’t born in Sweden, Duplantis moved there after finishing at LSU and was named Swedish male athlete of the year in 2019, 2021 and 2022.
