Armand Duplantis’s world pole vault record of 6.17 metres, Yulimar Rojas’s world indoor triple jump record of 15.43 metres and Joshua Cheptegei’s 12:51 5 kilometres world record have been ratified by the World Athletics on Monday, June 29, 2020.
Duplantis was in sensational form throughout the indoor season and opened his 2020 campaign with a 6.00 metres vault in Dusseldorf. Four days later, at the World Athletics Indoor Tour meeting in the Polish city of Torun on February 8, he went much higher.
The European champion started with first-attempt clearances at 5.72 metres, 5.92 meters and 6.01 metres. On his first attempt at 6.17 metres, he brushed the bar with his thigh on the way up, sending it crashing down.
Duplantis only needed one more. It wasn’t clean again he brushed it slightly on the way up, but the bar stayed on as he sailed back down to earth. For the first time, as a world record-holder.
His vault added one centimetre to the previous record set by Renaud Lavillenie of France in Donetsk, Ukraine, on February 15, 2014.
One week later at the World Athletics Indoor Tour meeting in Glasgow, Duplantis vaulted 6.18 metres a mark that is still pending ratification.
Rojas was also a revelation during the indoor season. The two-time world indoor and 2019 outdoor champion from Venezuela had just two triple jump competitions, her first being a 15.03 metres leap in Metz.
The 24-year-old then made history at the World Athletics Indoor Tour meeting in Madrid on February 21. After a cautious start to the competition, recording two fouls and a valid 14.65m, she bounded out to 15.29 metres in round four, the second-best indoor jump in history.
She wasn’t finished, though. Following one more foul in round five, Rojas flew out to 15.43 metres in the final round, adding seven centimetres to the previous world indoor record set by Russia’s Tatyana Lebedeva in Budapest on March 6, 2004.
