Business Wire

Pole Vault Star Armand “Mondo” Duplantis Sets His Sights on Fairy Tale World Record of 6.40m

Share

Pole vault world-record holder Armand “Mondo” Duplantis believes he can push the pole-vault world record to 6.40 metres in the next few years, the athlete said in a conversation with PUMA CEO Arne Freundt, which was released as a part of the sports company’s annual report.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250318752992/en/

When it comes to pole vaulting, Mondo is in a league of his own, having won two Olympic gold medals, two world championships, breaking the world record 11 times and being crowned World Athlete of the Year twice. Even though he just set the world record to 6.27 metres earlier this year, the Swedish athlete has his sights on raising the bar to 6.40 metres in the future.

“I think that 6.30 metres is probably the target in the near future, and 6.40 metres is achievable in the next few years,” Mondo said.

He said improvements in the technology of his spikes were an important part of making him jump ever higher and with the help of the innovation team at PUMA, he took inspiration from sprinting spikes to create the ultimate pole-vaulting shoe.

“We know that there is a direct correlation of the energy and the speed that you have on the runway and how high you can jump,” Mondo said. “It was such a perfect match with PUMA from the beginning, because we knew how good of a concept and grasp you had on speed. We wanted to make some kind of mix between a sprint spike and a pole-vaulting spike. They are very much lighter and more aggressive with the toe spring than what you used to see years ago in a pole-vaulting spike. I think that's what helps me and allows me to get up to the speeds that I want to create to be able to jump stuff like a world record.”

Introducing innovations in its performance product range is an important part of PUMA’s brand elevation strategy to create the basis for long-term, sustainable growth.

“As a sports brand, it's super important that we show up with the best athletes and prove that our products perform at the highest levels and enable a better performance,” said PUMA CEO Arne Freundt. “I think that is for sure an important marketing piece, but the learnings we take from an innovation angle are even more important. That we really understand what makes you faster before the jump, what makes you jump higher and that we take these learnings and turn them into a product innovation.”

The full conversation is available as part of PUMA’s digital annual report which is available at https://annual-report.puma.com

PUMA

PUMA is one of the world’s leading sports brands, designing, developing, selling and marketing footwear, apparel and accessories. For more than 75 years, PUMA has relentlessly pushed sport and culture forward by creating fast products for the world’s fastest athletes. PUMA offers performance and sport-inspired lifestyle products in categories such as Football, Running and Training, Basketball, Golf, and Motorsports. It collaborates with renowned designers and brands to bring sport influences into street culture and fashion. The PUMA Group owns the brands PUMA, Cobra Golf and stichd. The company distributes its products in more than 120 countries, employs about 20,000 people worldwide, and is headquartered in Herzogenaurach/Germany.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250318752992/en/

Contacts

Media Contact: Robert-Jan Bartunek – Teamhead Corporate Communications –
robert.bartunek@puma.com

About Business Wire

For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.

www.businesswire.com

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

Spatial Corp. and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd Collaborate to Leverage Spatial Software Components to Power neoROSET Robot Programming19.3.2025 00:00:00 EET | Press release

Spatial Corp., the leading 3D software development toolkit provider for design, manufacturing and engineering solutions and a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd today announced their collaboration to leverage Spatial Software Development Kits (SDKs) in the development of neoROSET, Kawasaki next-generation offline robot programming tool. With Spatial, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. benefited from SDK technological excellence as well as expertise to develop neoROSET, its advanced industrial robot programming software designed to simplify and optimize robotic systems assessment and construction. Key Spatial SDKs used in neoROSET include: CGM Modeler, a state-of-the-art 3D modeling kernel 3D InterOp, a robust data translation library enabling seamless data import and export in major formats HOOPS Visualize, a high-performance graphics library offering state-of-the-art visualization capabilities for engineering applications AGM, a comprehensive 3D applicati

NetApp Storage Now Validated for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, NVIDIA Cloud Partners, and NVIDIA-Certified Systems18.3.2025 22:00:00 EET | Press release

NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the intelligent data infrastructure company, today announced that NVIDIA has validated high-performance NetApp enterprise storage systems with NetApp ONTAP® for environments powering AI training and inferencing. For the first time, with NetApp, customers can now get the benefits of validated configurations and architectures for NVIDIA—including NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, NVIDIA Cloud Partners, and NVIDIA-Certified Storage—combined with the rich and mature data management services in NetApp ONTAP critical for building AI factories. These certifications ready NetApp to tap the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design for NetApp ONTAP to advance storage infrastructure with AI agents for reasoning model inference workloads, powered by NVIDIA accelerated computing, networking, and software. “NetApp and NVIDIA are longstanding technology partners, jointly serving hundreds of customers for AI model training and inferencing,” said Jonsi Stefansson, Senior Vice President and C

NetApp Fuels Future of Agentic AI Reasoning Solutions with NVIDIA AI Data Platform18.3.2025 22:00:00 EET | Press release

NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the intelligent data infrastructure company, today announced it is advancing the state of the art in agentic AI with intelligent data infrastructure that taps the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design. By collaborating with NVIDIA, NetApp is enabling businesses to better leverage their data to fuel AI reasoning inference. In the era of intelligence, businesses need to rethink their data strategies to turn rapidly growing data estates into competitive assets that empower them to agilely navigate their business environment. By adopting an Intelligent Data Infrastructure framework, businesses will be able to operate under a unified vision that integrates metadata cataloging, automation, and hybrid cloud capabilities to eliminate siloes and deliver actionable insights at every stage of the AI pipeline. Together, NetApp ONTAP® and the NVIDIA AI Data Platform enable businesses to navigate the era of intelligence by building distributed systems that unlock the full

Outseer Launches Platformized Behavioral Biometrics Delivering Unmatched Defense in Depth18.3.2025 21:52:00 EET | Press release

Outseer, a recognized leader in authentication and fraud prevention for digital banking and 3-D Secure (3DS) transactions, announced its platform-native Behavioral Biometrics capability today. The addition of platformized Behavioral Biometrics introduces another layer of defense that continuously analyzes user interactions to detect anomalies in real time. Building on its rich RSA® heritage (formerly RSA Fraud & Risk Intelligence™), Outseer has enhanced its platform to meet today’s dynamic threat landscape. As fraud evolves—spurred by the digitization of payments, the spread of personal data across the dark web, the growing threat of scams and authorized fraud, as well as advancements like GenAI—Outseer’s multi-signal risk engine, leveraging sophisticated machine learning algorithms and AI, sets a new standard for continuous, unified protection. “Our customers are facing rising authorized and unauthorized fraud threats in digital banking and 3DS transactions, requiring fraud solutions

Ravenna Becomes the First Colourblind-Friendly City in Italy: Event and New EnChroma Glasses Donation18.3.2025 18:29:00 EET | Press release

Tomorrow, March 19, 2025, at 4:30 PM, the conference "How Colourblind People See" will be held at the Martini Hall of MAR – Ravenna’s Museum of Art. This event is dedicated to raising awareness about colour blindness and the challenges of colour perception. Speakers will include Stefano De Pietro, President of the Italian Association "How Colourblind People See", and Sandor Breznay, President of the Breznay-Ganoczy Foundation (Agno, Switzerland) and the Paolina Brugnatelli Foundation (Milan). Colour blindness affects approximately 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women, with over 300 million people worldwide experiencing this condition—2.5 million in Italy. While those with normal colour vision can distinguish over a million shades, individuals with colour vision deficiency see only about 10% of those hues. As a result, colours may appear dull or even indistinguishable. This initiative aims to increase public awareness and make cultural and educational experiences more accessible for those wit

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye