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Pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis is rarely beaten and he outsprinted 400m hurdler Karsten Warholm in the hotly-anticipated 100 metres exhibition race in Zurich on Wednesday, which brought the two world record holders together in a neutral event.
Duplantis was quickest off the blocks and finished with a very respectable time of 10.37s, with Warholm trailing all the way and posting 10.47s.
“I’m pretty fired up. How could I not be? I mean, come on, stop playing. Stop playing. Stop playing with me,” a delighted Duplantis said at the finish line.
The idea for the race came after some friendly banter between the pair in training last year, and when the sprint was finally scheduled after Paris 2024 was out of the way, it captured the imagination of athletics fans worldwide.
The pair entered the track like boxers coming into the ring, with Duplantis in the blue satin gown and Warholm in the red, and there had been plenty of fighting talk in the build-up and light-hearted trash-talk between the friends.
They shook hands before shedding their robes and making their way to the starting blocks, and it was Duplantis who got away fastest with Warholm unable to catch the Swede.
“You know, I got to give it to Mondo. He beat me today, fair and square, so it was a great race,” Warholm said.
“And he was he was out the blocks fast. He was out really sharp.”
For a change from when Duplantis competes in his own event, the world record of 9.58 set by Usain Bolt in 2009 was never under threat, but they did both run faster than the women’s record of 10.49 seconds set by Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988.
Duplantis has broken the pole vault record 10 times to date, including at Paris last month when he retained his Olympic title, and set his latest record 10 days ago with a vault of 6.26 at the Silesian Diamond League.
Warholm won silver in Paris, having won Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021 where he also broke his own world record with a time of 45.94 seconds, which still stands.
The pair will be back in action at the same venue in their traditional disciplines on Thursday, in the Weltklasse Diamond League at the Letzigrund Stadium, and Warholm was presented with a Swedish shirt after his loss which he is expected to wear in his race.
Reuters
