Sweden's Mondo Duplantis wins the pole vault gold medal in specially designed "claw" shoes. Photo / AFP
The competition at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo was almost two-and-a-half hours old when it finally got serious.
On went the special “claw” shoes, an innovation by Puma with a hooked spike hanging off the toe at the front, and Swedish star Mondo Duplantis duly sailed comfortably over 6m.
With the rest of the field having toiled away with a mixture of clearances and fouls over the preceding hours, it instantly left only Greek athlete Emmanouil Karalis with any possible chance of stopping Duplantis from winning another world pole vault title.
Against the most dominant athlete in world sport, that was only ever going to be a theoretical point and attention would soon turn to where it now always does. Yet another world record to order?
Duplantis already had 13, eking the standard up a centimetre at a time – Sergey Bubka-style – all the way from 6.17m five years ago to 6.29m after three more world records in 2025.
Becoming the first man over 6.30m was therefore the aim, but first came the relatively trifling business of clinching an eighth straight global crown.
Karalis, with a personal best of 6.08m, made the bold call to move the bar up to 6.10m in an attempt to put some pressure on Duplantis and just grazed it in failing at his first attempt.
Duplantis, of course, duly sailed over and, with Karalis then also failing with audacious attempts both at 6.15m and 6.20m, we were indeed left only to discover if further history would be made.
There would be a further twist. After vaulting throughout the competition with his usual pole, Duplantis brought out a brand new one that he had been saving for Tokyo. “Just a tiny bit stiffer,” he had said ahead of the competition, and he was only millimetres off clearing 6.30m at the first attempt.
With the track programme having finished for the night, and the beaten Karalis now cooling Duplantis between jumps with a portable fan, the focus of all 65,000 people inside Japan National Stadium was on the 25-year-old Swede.
Attempt two was even closer. Duplantis touched the bar and it looked momentarily likely to stay put but the grazing contact with his knee would prove just too much.
The DJ put on some Abba in the five minutes ahead of the third and final attempt, with Duplantis orchestrating the crowd to a crescendo of noise. Could he really deliver such a perfect finish?
Of course he could. After becoming the first man to clear 6.20m in 2022, Duplantis duly also became the first over 6.30m, celebrating joyously with his equally delighted beaten competitors, a lap of the track and then a prolonged kiss with Swedish model girlfriend Desiré Inglander.
Another US$100,000 ($168,000) world record bonus is also incoming. “It’s the biggest dream ever come true for me,” Duplantis said. It also added up to one of the greatest moments in the entire history of the world championships.
Much intrigue has surrounded the “claw” shoe and it was interesting that second-placed Karalis, also a Puma-sponsored athlete, had opted for a more conventional choice of shoe.
Also used by Karsten Warholm in the 400m hurdles, Duplantis says that the extra traction of the claw helps him reach his formidable top speed more quickly in the 20 steps he goes from a standing start to something approaching 40km/h.
“I can really feel the benefit from the very beginning of the running,” said Duplantis, a 10.37s 100m runner with the flexibility of a gymnast, whose pole vault mantra is that “speed equals height”.
He does not use the “claw” for every jump because he sometimes catches his hands on the spike as he comes down. “So if you ever see there’s blood on me, it’s because of that,” Duplantis explained. Working with Puma, he has since had a plastic cover added to lessen the risk of abrasions.
Romain Girard, Puma’s shoe designer, says that the claw is actually now “kind of a little condom ... a shell made of protective rubber” in its latest iteration.
“The foundation of the conversation is that they [Warholm and his coach Leif Olav Alnes] realised if they had a bigger lever – and could manage that lever from a muscle point of view – then they would run faster,” said Girard. “It’s not the easiest to handle but, in theory, it should give you that extra speed. And that’s what happened.”
In Duplantis, the innovators, of course, also have a supreme athlete who likes nothing more than experimenting with ways to go even higher. “Pole vault is a funky little weird motion that’s super stupid stuff,” Duplantis said. “I love it so much. I just want to keep improving and keep trying to advance myself in every way. As far as the run-up part, it [the claw] is huge.
“Whenever I think that I have a chance to break world records. I do bring out the claw. That’s why I don’t do it every time. When they come out, then you know it’s business time.”
It was indeed and, just as with his golden world record at the Paris Olympics last summer, the sport’s greatest showman delivered.
– Daily Telegraph