The China Mail - 'More in the tank', vows Duplantis as he edges to century mark

To put that century mark into perspective, Ukranian vaulting legend and former world record holder Sergey Bubka achieved it just 45 times.

"I feel like it's quite possible because of the way that everybody is jumping," Duplantis said.

"I'll probably have to do it just in order to win, so I'll probably be pushing that way.

"That would be quite cool actually: get the gold with 100 clearances over six metres. That would be quite neat."

Duplantis has long dominated pole vaulting and earlier this month set an 11th word record when he cleared 6.27 metres in Clermont.

But the self-effacing US-born Swede insisted that competition was improving, albeit still 20cm off his best.

"It's a bit of a fallacy in a way, because I think the level of vaulting, especially in the past years, has grown rapidly," he said of pundits' perceived lack of real competition.

"Just for example, Emmanouil (Karalis of Greece) has cleared 6m three times just in this season. Everybody's jumping at a way higher level than they were previously. And it just happens to be that I'm also continuing to grow, but also jump at a higher level too."

Duplantis added: "I try to keep improving as much as they're improving, so that they don't close the gaps.

"There are so many more people capable of clearing 6m at any given day... It's not just me, and hopefully I can be in the forefront and push my body too."

- 25 years young -

It is 10 years since Duplantis first represented Sweden, the homeland of his mother, but the double Olympic champion insisted that at the age of 25 he still felt young.

"I feel like there's so much left to achieve, even though the past few years have been really a dream. I just try to be grateful for the whole journey and everything that I've been able to accomplish thus far," he said.

"I've done pretty much all the things that I could've dreamt about.

"That kind of makes me think a little bit to really try to enjoy the moments when you have (them) and really enjoy the privilege of being able to be an athlete and to compete at these kind of competitions."

Turning to his vaulting, Duplantis acknowledged that the fact he didn't have to battle through clearing lesser heights left him in better shape for world record attempts.

"In a good competition, I guess I'll take less attempts and have enough energy to where I can really give my best effort, and feel like I'm very fresh and sharp when it comes to the world record," the Louisiana-born athlete said.

"But you also have to have tools to be able to break the word record too, not just energy.

"It's so many things that go into a jump, like a world record... you have to make all the right decisions leading up to it. But fortunately, the past few years, we've made the right decision quite a few times."

Duplantis added: "There's a lot of improvements to that. I feel like I haven't really hit any jumps where I felt like, 'Okay, that's just the perfect jump and there's no jumping to be better than that'.

"I'm pretty confident that everything is turning upwards and that I have bigger jumps in me, and I'm luckily able to control it, too, as far as what I decide to jump at. That's a bit of a cheat code in a way, but it's nice.

"I know that there's more in the tank and I like the way that everything looks."

U.Chen--ThChM