Madrid (Spain), 20 April (LaPresse) – Who was my sporting hero when I was little? “I would say my father,” and then ’I grew up idolising people like Sergey Bubka and Renaud Lavillenie.’ This was said by pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis when answering questions from journalists during the ‘Olympic Reflections’ panel at the Laureus World Sports Awards, the Oscars of sport, currently taking place in Madrid. The Olympic champion is nominated in the ‘Sportsman of the Year’ category. Duplantis said that, in addition to admiring athletes, he loves to play ‘many sports’, ‘and many of these athletes are people I admire and who inspire me a lot’. ‘Growing up, my biggest passion was the polo team,’ he said. Speaking about the solidarity often seen among pole vault champions in competition, Duplantis said that the fact that it is ‘a very individual sport’ ‘helps to unite everyone’, ‘because whatever the person on the other side does, it doesn't necessarily affect my moves or my performance’. Pole vaulting is ‘a competition with yourself and, in my opinion, against the bar, in the sense that you try to get the best result possible on the scoreboard. That's where the real competition lies,’ he said. “Pole vaulting,” he added, is “a bit of a strange and crazy discipline that requires certain characteristics” and that ’attracts people like us who practise it, and that brings us together, because we're all a bit strange in our own way, if only because we dare to pole vault.’
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