Armand "Mondo" Duplantis is an American-Swedish pole vaulter.
Background
Duplantis was born into an athletic family. His AmericanCajun French father, Greg Duplantis, was a former pole vaulter with a personal best of 19 ft 1⁄4 in (580 m), while his Swedish mother Helena (née Hedlund) was a former heptathlete and volleyball player.
Career
His two older brothers, Andreas and Antoine, also took up sports. Andreas represented Sweden as a pole vaulter at the 2009 World Youth Championships and 2012 World Junior Championships, while Antoine dropped pole vault for baseball in high school. Armand Duplantis first tried pole vaulting as a four-year-old at the family"s home in Lafayette, Louisiana, and took to the event rapidly.
He set his first age group world best at age 7, and his jump of 12 ft 8 in (386 m) as a ten-year-old surpassed the previous world bests for ages 11 and 12 as well.
As of July 2015, he holds the world best in all age groups from age 7 to age 12. He held the age 13 record until it was broken in May 2015.
In 2015, his freshman year at Lafayette High School, Duplantis set national freshman records both indoors and outdoors and was named Gatorade Louisiana Boys Track & Field Athlete of the Year. As a citizen of both the United States and Sweden, Duplantis could have chosen to vault for either country internationally.
In June 2015 it was announced that he had selected Sweden.