By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) -With a 13th world record in the bag and an endless hunger for accolades to match his high-flying antics, peerless pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis brings genuine celebrity swagger to this month's World Athletics Championships.
The back-to-back Olympic champion gave fans a taste of what to expect in Tokyo when he soared over 6.29 metres in Budapest last month, the latest in a series of performances that have left sports writers struggling for superlatives.
"I love pushing
myself and I love trying to get the most out of myself," Duplantis said in the run-up to the September 13-21 biennial showpiece.
"I just have this real internal drive and motivation that I just want to keep being better. I have short-term memory loss. I probably don't let it soak in and forget my accomplishments too quickly."
The record-keepers would be quick to remind him: The 25-year-old has lost just four times since he broke his first world record in February 2020, soaring 6.17m to break Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie's record of 6.16m set six years prior.
He picked up his fifth Diamond League trophy at Zurich last month, two shy of Lavillenie's record, after holding off Greek rival Emmanouil Karalis when he got over 6.00m on the fifth try.
And while field events have long played second-fiddle to the high-octane track, the Swede's profile will rival the biggest celebrities on the blocks at Tokyo's National Stadium.
With looks and charisma that have drawn frequent comparisons to Hollywood star Timothee Chalamet, Duplantis has emerged as the kind of A-lister athletics has craved since Usain Bolt retired.
"It's a lot of recognition of course," said Duplantis, who already has a pair of world titles to match his Olympic haul.
"It's always quite big as far as just the impact that it has every time I break the record, which is quite cool. There's more and more, I guess, really cool people that send me congrats and whatnot."
He has used the same equipment since he first hit the 6.20m mark in Belgrade three years ago, and conceded that a change to a stiffer pole may be necessary to keep his record run going.
"I have one pole that's just a tiny bit stiffer that I've tried to use and I haven't really been able to use it, but I haven't also tried it when I'm in really good shape," he told reporters.
"Hopefully in the near future when I when I am trying to get just a few more centimetres even out of myself, then I plan to go to another pole."
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, editing by Nick Mulvenney and Peter Rutherford)
