Sweden's Armand Duplantis bettered his own world record as he grabbed the Paris Olympics pole vault title in on Monday. In a sensational finish to the fifth day of track and field at the Stade de France, Duplantis sailed over the bar raised to 6.25 meters to make the gold medal his own.
The effort received rapturous applause from a 69,000-capacity crowd as the Swedish star bettered the 'world record' by 1cm his own previous best of 6.24m set at the Xiamen Diamond League meet in April.
What Duplantis did after clinching the gold, however, went viral on social media. Duplantis copied the shooting pose of Turkey's Yusuf Dikec, the shooter who went viral on social media after he 'casually' clinched a silver medal in the Paris Games.
Dikec himself also took to social media to congratulate Duplantis after the pole vaulter's historic gold. Congratulations Duplantis pic.twitter.com/VgtsuBC43L Celebration unmatched #Paris2024 #Olympics pic.twitter.com/ThuJvNzlO4 Remarkably it was the ninth time the US-born Swede had broken the record.