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The American-born Swede has explained what he feels about being compared to Usain Bolt in the manner the two of them live their lives off the track
Two-time world and Olympic pole vault champion Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis has shrugged off any similarities in personality with Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt.
While taking to the media ahead of Friday’s Brussels Diamond League, Duplantis was asked if his way of finding balance between sports and leisure is similar to that of Bolt.
“You are laid back, do you reckon you are more of that than Usain Bolt?” the interviewer posed.
Duplantis responded: “I don’t really know how laid back he was, it feels very laid back and maybe something similar, I guess,” said Duplantis who won his second world title in Budapest, Hungary last month.
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20:30 - 27.08.2023
ATHLETICS Usain Bolt fires back at Noah Lyles, reminds him who the sprints ‘king’ is
Usain Bolt has aimed a brutal jibe at Noah Lyles after the American failed to break his records in Budapest as he had promised
“I don’t know, I’m still a little bit young I guess so I was not competing at the same as Usain was so, I have heard and there is always a good balance to find and that is in the way I go about things and the way he goes about things.
“There is always a balance that people need to have in life and as an athlete to be able to separate themselves from the sport and I think it is a very important thing mentally as well because I think that it is pretty easy to get very bogged down if your life is surrounded only by what you do in your sport. I don’t really know him like that so maybe similar I really have no idea.”
Sweden's world record holder Duplantis claimed his second consecutive world pole vault title in Budapest but did not have a seventh world record in him after clearing 6.10m for gold and then - in what turned into the "Mondo show" - missed at three attempts to clear 6.23, which would have been world record number seven for the remarkable 23-year-old.
The American-born Duplantis has since emerged as one of Sweden’s most beloved athletes, endearing himself to a once-skeptical public by speaking Swedish in interviews, driving Swedish cars, buying a place to live in Sweden during the summer and dating a Swedish model, Desiré Inglander.
The two made headlines when they kissed on live TV at a track meet in Stockholm in July 2021.
In a newspaper poll of 1,500 Swedes in 2020, he won in a landslide as the country’s most popular athlete, defeating footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic and the three-time Olympic champion cross-country skier Charlotte Kalla.
14:54 - 26.08.2023
Noah Lyles comes for Usain Bolt for being absent at the World Championships
Noah Lyles talked about ways of making Athletics a better sport and he mentioned Usain Bolt.
However, Duplantis does not come close to the maverick Bolt who was box office on and off the track. Besides wowing fans with his running skills as well as post-race celebrations, Bolt was known to unwind by dancing to reggae music, attending other entertainment events as well as playing and watching football matches.
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