There's an irony to meeting Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis on the 39th floor of his hotel in Tokyo. He seems much more at home up in the air than down on the ground.
On Monday, the Swedish pole vaulter returned to the very track where he claimed his first Olympic gold in 2021.
He capped an incredible four years by claiming a third straight World Championship title, ending the night with a third-and-final attempt clearance of 6.30 meters for yet another world record.
Duplantis, now 25, last summer became the first man since 1956 to defend an Olympic pole vault crown. He has won eight straight global finals and set 14 world records. His last defeat? Forty meets and two years ago.
Looking out over the Tokyo skyline at sunset, The Athletic sat down with Duplantis to go through five of his world records.
"You want it to be technical?" he asks. Absolutely.
This is Mondo Duplantis, and his world records, in his words.
"I felt like I had my best jumps a little earlier in the competition, so I was hanging on a little," Duplantis says. "Probably because Manolo (Emmanouil Karalis, silver medal) jumped so well and pushed me hard. He made me jump more."
Karalis cleared 6.00m before failures at 6.10m, 6.15m and 6.20m in a desperate bid for gold. Dupantis cleared the first two of those, so he had jumped five times to win, before raising the bar to 6.30m.
He knocked it off the first two times, but was closer on the second go than his first attempt. The aim was to "just have one more good run."
"I was just trying so hard to keep my posture. It was actually quite sloppy, really not the cleanest jump that I've had, but just enough in it."
Two small tweaks made the difference. First, he changed the standards of the crossbar. These are the two sticks that hold up the bar, and can be moved anywhere from zero to 80 centimeters away from the box (where the pole is planted into). This lets jumpers change the angle of the clearance.
"I moved the centers a little bit closer to me. Just five centimeters. It's only this much," he explains, holding his thumb and index finger close together. "Just to give myself a jump that was a little more vertical."
The issue for Duplantis in his first two attempts at 6.30m was his angles. He had the height but came down too quickly on the bar, not getting his hips fully beyond it.
He was holding the other difference. "I was trying out a new pole and it worked. I actually had zero plans of using it. I thought I was going to use the pole that I've been using to make this (world record jump) from 6.20m to 6.29m. In the moment, it just felt right to try it out and roll the dice."
The call for the eighth and final pole -- the stiffest one -- came from Greg, Duplantis' father, who coaches him with Helena, his mother.
"It was my first time really giving it a proper try. That was new, and it's quite small differences, but it bends a little bit differently. It's stiffer, so it comes back a little faster.
"It demanded a little more out of me from the takeoff. It's like a catapult, a little harder and I have less room for error on it, but when it re-closes and unbends, it's going to come back a lot faster, which will give you more of a ride if you catch it right."
He caught it right on the third go, and, despite grazing the bar with his shins, managed to whip his chest and arms back quickly enough to watch a wobbling bar stay put while he hit the mat.
"I probably still gave it a look just to make sure, but it felt good when I was going over there." Duplantis bounced off the mat and landed on his feet. The other jumpers mobbed him, before he ran off in celebration to Desiree, his fiancée, and his parents in the crowd.
"Maybe I'm a very hard person on my jumps, but it didn't feel so amazing. That day, I felt maybe the best that I've ever felt physically -- really fast, that I had a lot in the body and in the tank.
"Up until this point, I went three weeks without jumping. It's not that crazy but for most people, that would be quite long. It wasn't because of anything -- just by choice -- I wanted to focus on training and building a good base for Worlds.
"I don't really need to jump that much anymore. I have that luxury -- I jumped so much when I was younger. So this meet, I had so much speed and energy, and was really powerful, (could make) big jumps, but I was just trying to control everything. That jump I lined up quite alright, but my run was inconsistent the whole day."
Duplantis, evidently a perfectionist, insists, "I don't care whether I touch the bar or not, as long as the jump feels good and I feel like I can keep improving."
This jump was his 13th world record, all of which have improved his previous best by one centimetre. The only criticism he receives is that he takes advantage of the system, choosing to set incremental world records because he gets a payday each time.
"The milking thing is fair in some regards, but I don't make it so hard where I'm killing these bars in practice.
"It's a common myth that people think I jump 6.35m in training. It's not even like the (physically) taxing part of it -- that's why I don't jump so much -- but I just can't jump higher than like 6.15m. That's the max. I just don't have the same speed (in training)."
He compares it to elite men's sprinters not dropping 9.70-second times in practice. "They don't have the same adrenaline, the same energy. One hundred per cent effort in training is not the same as 100 per cent in competition."
Duplantis, a self-described "showman," says he "activates into a different gear" in competition, which is what takes him to world-record heights.
"It's actually a really nice jump if you understand Stockholm. It's just not a great place to jump. I don't think anybody's even jumped six meters there."
He means anyone else, obviously, having cleared 6.00m seven times at the Swedish Olympic Stadium, which hosted the 1928 Games. "It's probably the best stadium record I'll ever have. I always wanted to jump a world record in Sweden."
What makes somewhere a good place, or not, to jump? "It's a little bit of the angles of the box (where the pole goes into). I have such trouble moving the poles through, it always feels so stiff. I train there all the time too. I have a good connection with them, I'm used to it, but even still, it is hard to make it work there.
"Stockholm is so unreliable. There's like a 50 per cent chance that it's impossible because the weather is just not there and it's not going to be warm, the wind's gonna be s***, and it's not that good a place to jump."
To his point, none of the 83 world records set at the Stockholm Olympic Stadium between 1912 and 2008 were in pole vault. He had three unsuccessful attempts at 6.25m there last summer.
And yet, he cleared 6.28m at the first attempt this June, his fifth jump total of the competition.
"We actually got a good wind on that jump in particular, and it was warm. A lot of uncontrollables came together that never happen in Stockholm, and then it was up to me to make the right jump. In that way, it's the most special because it was the most unrealistic -- the impossible one."
"I didn't feel nearly as good running as I did, let's say, on the 6.29m and 6.30m (world records). Everything past the takeoff was connected so well, I really just found the pocket and the timing. But I was surprised, because I'd never had a jump that big in Stockholm. I couldn't believe it had happened."
"There's definitely a lot of influence from French jumpers," Duplantis says, explaining the double-leg takeoff technique he uses. This is different to the traditional method of one leg, and something that former Olympic champion and world-record holder Renaud Lavillenie popularized.
"He would drop the knee and double leg swing, and then tuck (his knees to his chest) and shoot (upwards). It's a much more controlled way to invert and jump, and way more powerful. I've tried everything, and this was the most natural."
It was fitting that a French-inspired technique launched Duplantis to Olympic gold in Paris last summer -- like Tokyo, another last-gasp third-time jump for the world record put the cherry on top.
He only needed four jumps to be safely over six meters, by which point the gold was his, then made sure to clear 6.10m to at least have the Olympic record.
Duplantis' first two 6.25m world-record attempts had more than enough runway speed, and thus height, but, like in Tokyo, the angles were off. Twice he came over and his shins took the bar down with him.
"I needed just a little bit extra energy, but still somehow to find the right spot on the takeoff, which is very difficult. I just found the rhythm, the acceleration. It was right there, exactly where I wanted to be for that day, that pole, that grip. Then it just happens."
"Just happens" might seem a remarkable oversimplification, but this is like asking a surgeon to explain the cuts they make, a freestyle rapper how they create their bars, or for a gymnast or diver to detail how they execute multiple somersaults in quick succession.
"I'm so used to all of this, the jumping, the whole motion. I have like this weird level of body control -- I know where I am and where the bar is," he says.
An innovative Puma spike helped him in Paris, too, and he put it on again for his Tokyo world record.
The pole vault-specific design featured 'the claw,' which is an extra spike that extends out the front of the shoe, something first designed for 400m hurdler Karsten Warholm (who Duplantis beat over 100m last year, running 10.37s).
"I only jump in them on special occasions, because I had a problem (before) with the claw. It would cut my hand right when I was on the inversion (phase, bringing his knees to his chest).
"It's super nice to feel that extra grip and extra push, mostly on the run, but maybe the take off a little bit too. In the drive phase, especially, it has an impact because you can get a little bit lower, it almost catches you."
That outstanding runway speed explains much of the difference between Duplantis and everyone else. He jumps from an 11-step run-up (pole vaulters count every other step) that starts at the back of the runway.
"The simplest form of pole vaulting and what it is: you're trying to create the most energy through the take off and lose the least amount of energy through the next part of the jump, and push the biggest pole in correlation to your body weight, to get as high as you can. That's the simple way of describing what I do better than other guys.
"I'm very light in correlation to how stiff the poles I use are. That's a combination of speed, technique, take off, and then that fluidity of the jump."
"That's a life-changing moment right there," Duplantis says, watching his 20-year-old self clear 6.17m five years ago, his first world record. Then, Lavillenie had been the highest vaulter worldwide for six years.
"I'm very different as an athlete (now). It's crazy. I gripped higher (on the pole) than I do now. It's quite weird, actually.
"That jump is a slower jump. My running speed was slower too, but also I'm gripping higher, so the pull has been slower as far as the bend and the recoil."
On the rewatch, a fresh-faced Duplantis does look to be jumping more in slow motion than how he moves now. "Bending in the pole is a little overrated sometimes, because you actually want the jump to be relatively quick."
He says that gripping high, while necessary to jump higher, is harder, and jokes about Lavillenie's "banana bends," which he "murders" to compensate for weaker runway speed.
"That's why my floor has just got so much higher as well, I started gripping a little bit lower, using stiffer poles."
One thing that has not changed is his pre-jump approach: "I try to keep it as simple as I can. Just relax and visualize what I want, the jump I want to achieve."
Unprompted, he brings up 6.40m as the next big target. "How I'm going to do that, I don't know exactly the full plan yet."
If the past five years are anything to go by, he will figure it out. Duplantis has, time and again, proved the aptness of the Mondo nickname bestowed upon him as a toddler.
"I knew that it meant 'world' in Italian. It just sounded cool, it felt like me and it felt powerful. The only people that call me Armand are those who really don't know me, or my grandparents in Sweden."
And a lot of people know of Mondo now. "I say this, trying to be as humble as I possibly can, being out here in Tokyo, I don't know if I've ever been recognised more in my life. It's like a 40 million-person city version of Stockholm. It's the weirdest thing I've ever experienced in my life.
"I'm just so grateful that I can push it (pole vault) in that way and that I can bring some type of spotlight on what is such a beautiful event. It's a show, it's entertaining."