A short while ago Sweden’s Armand “Mondo” Duplantis secured his second straight Olympic gold medal in the pole vault with a world record of 6.25 meters in the final, knocking off America’s Sam Kendricks in the process. But if circumstances were different, Duplantis could have been claiming that gold for his birth country: The United States.
Born in Louisiana to an American father and a Swedish mother, Duplantis attended LSU for college, but he never competed at the international level for the United States. He was recruited by a Sweden youth coach named Jonas Anshelm when he was a young teen and thrived while representing the Scandinavian nation. But recruiting Duplantis was not easy.
According to the New York Post, Anshelm initially was turned down by Duplantis despite his older brother already representing Sweden. So Anshelm decided to sweeten the pot by offering a national team coaching job to Duplantis’ father, Greg. Within a few weeks, he got the call from Greg Duplantis saying that Mondo would represent Sweden.
“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,” Anshelm said in a 2022 video. “I definitely wanted to have him in the team. So, that’s when it started.”
“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 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.’”
Anshelm’s efforts paid off in a big way. Duplantis now holds the world record in the pole vault and has delivered two gold medals to Sweden. He will likely go down as the greatest pole vaulter of the 21st century, if not all time.
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