The roar in Budapest was deafening. Mondo Duplantis had just cleared 6.29 metres, another world record, his 13th and for a moment the crowd at the Istvan Gyulai Memorial forgot to breathe.
The Swedish-American phenom, barely 25, had done it again. Yet, as in every other record-breaking performance since 2020, he had nudged the mark up by only a single centimetre.
It’s a tactic steeped in both history and strategy. In July 1985, Sergey Bubka became the first man to conquer the mythical six-metre barrier, leaping from 5.94m straight to 6.00m.
That was the last major leap forward in the pole vault’s record books. From there, Bubka refined a very deliberate method, incremental gains, centimetre by centimetre, fuelled by a Nike sponsorship bonus paid for each new record.
The Ukrainian’s jumps often had clearance to spare, but he held back, knowing there would be another payday and another headline waiting.
Duplantis has taken that playbook and rewritten it for the modern era. Each time he breaks the record, first 6.17m in Toruń, now 6.29m in Budapest, World Athletics pays $100,000, and sponsors Puma and Red Bull add their own lucrative bonuses.
The catch: those rewards are only paid once per meeting, no matter how many times the bar is raised in the same event. The result? One-centimetre steps, spread out over seasons, keeping the bank balance and the suspense high.
No wonder Puma’s social media team jokingly pleaded under the announcement of his latest record: “Please give us a rest.”
And the timing could not be better. In just weeks, Duplantis will head to Japan for the 2025 Tokyo World Athletics Championships, where a gold medal would add $70,000 to his haul, and perhaps deliver world record number 14.
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