He had already clinched pole vaulting gold for the second consecutive Games when he targeted Thiago Braz’s Olympic record of 6.03m. He obliterated it with one attempt at the unnecessarily emphatic height of 6.10m. Most would consider that a fair night’s work but with the 800m women’s final concluded and nothing else left on the schedule this became the Duplantis show.
The world record stood at 6.24m, clinched by Duplantis earlier this year. The bar was raised a centimetre higher and for the first two jumps it looked as if Duplantis and a Swede-heavy crowd would be going home with the odd combination of a gold medal and mild disappointment. They need not have worried.
Duplantis led the crowd with the traditional arms-over-head claps of increasing speed before his first attempt but got serious by his third. There was silence as he composed himself, then a wave of encouraging roars for his run up. Pole safely planted, what he did next with his body was sublime. Legs pointed above his head at the apex of his jump before a contortion which put him into the optimum position to twirl over the bar.