Madrid, Apr 20: Long before he became a global star with two Olympic medals, Swedish-American pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis remembers meeting a humble Neeraj Chopra, who remained the “same nice guy” even after achieving astonishing success.
Fast forward to 2025, Duplantis is hailed as the greatest pole vaulter of all time — a seven-time senior global champion and the current world record holder at 6.27m — while Neeraj has cemented his legacy as India’s greatest-ever athlete, with a gold and silver from the last two Olympics.
On the eve of the Laureus World Sports Awards, Duplantis reflected on his early interactions with Neeraj, calling him a “huge inspiration.”
“We’ve interacted quite a bit actually and also being able to interact with him before Olympics in Tokyo and after the Olympics too when he was able to have that big viral moment and inspire the whole country of India which was super cool,” the 25-year-old, who has been nominated for Sportsman of the Year at the 2025 Laureus World Sports Awards, told PTI during an interview.
“He was still the same guy, same nice, caring guy as I met years back. We were at the same competition maybe the first time in like 2016 World Junior Championships, he also exploded on the scene there. He’s a huge, huge inspiration.
“I love what he does, he’s a really talented and great athlete and what he’s also doing just for sports in India is a really, is a really amazing thing.”
The Louisiana-born pole vaulter, who competes for Sweden, boasts an impressive CV. He has Olympic gold medals in Paris and Tokyo, and is a two-time world outdoor champion (2022, 2023), three-time world indoor champion (2022, 2024, 2025), and the reigning European champion.
Asked whether competing in India is on his bucket list, Duplantis said he wants to perform in the country rather than just make a courtesy visit.
“I would love to, I’m trying, the goal is with, there’s like the Mandel Classic and my own pole vault competition that I have in Sweden, it would be really nice to branch out and to venture off into different areas and different places,” he said.
“It definitely doesn’t just have to be in Europe, I mean it could be in India, that would be amazing, I would love to, I still haven’t been yet, unfortunately the way the schedule works out is a lot of my travel is competitions and what not.
“So the best thing would be to just compete in India and be able to show the Indian people what I can do and the most entertaining thing I do is definitely jump, not just talking, this is, and so yeah, I would love to come, and jump and experience the culture, that would be, that’s big time bucket list.”
Duplantis’ first Olympic gold came under the cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic, with events held behind closed doors in Tokyo. Naturally, he picks the Paris gold as his most cherished memory.
“It’s gotta be Paris, I mean I’d be kinda kidding myself and lying if I didn’t say Paris, so yeah it’s hard to beat Paris, the way the stars aligned in that moment was pretty special and gonna be hard to beat that honestly,” he said.
Describing the moment, Duplantis said: “It’s weird because it’s almost like it’s such an overwhelming moment and such a surreal moment that it’s hard to like absorb it and take it all in and it’s like so life changing too.
“It probably still hasn’t really settled in all the way yet, but I know that it’s the craziest moment that I’ve had thus far in my career and so hopefully we can keep doing, pushing in the way to have something that resembles that in the slightest, so yeah, but that’s the biggest for sure.”
The 25-year-old credits his father and coach Greg Duplantis, himself a former vaulter, as his biggest inspiration.
“It’s my dad… So I grew up idolising people like, just my daddy, Sergey Bubka, Renaud Lavillenie…”
“It’s a little bit of a ‘pinch me’ kind of thing. But for the most part when I was looking up to people, it was within my sport, I would say.” (PTI)
