Aug 28 (Reuters) - Olympic and world champion Mondo Duplantis has broken the pole vault world record 15 times and utterly dominated the event, but Greece's Emmanouil Karalis has now emerged as a real challenger having found the courage to go toe-to-toe with the Swede.
The pole vault has had a familiar feel in recent years. Duplantis wins the competition before going after his own world record, but there are signs that his one-man era could be at an end.
At Thursday's Zurich Diamond League, Karalis and Duplantis both attempted the world record for the first time in the same competition.
When Duplantis took the lead at 6.15 metres, Karalis responded with a personal best of 6.20 at the first attempt.
After Duplantis cleared 6.25, Karalis upped the ante by raising the bar to 6.32, one centimetre above the Swede's world record set at his own indoor meeting in March.
Karalis came close with his second effort and Duplantis thought he had done it on his third and final try only to throw the bar away in frustration when it followed him down to the landing mat.
"Not every day two people contend for the world record, so that was nuts," Karalis said.
"The difference between these heights is mostly mental. I have to break my mental barriers. In the next competition it will be mentally easier, I'm so happy I tried for it."
Karalis has attempted the world record before.
At the Greek indoor championships in February, he soared to 6.17 to become the second-highest pole vaulter in history, ahead of the legendary Sergey Bubka, and Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie, who held the record before Duplantis.
Karalis then made two unsuccessful attempts at 6.31 to snatch the record, and his latest exploits make him the only realistic challenger to Duplantis.
Duplantis suffered a rare defeat in June at the Stockholm Diamond League. On an off-day for the Swede, Australia's Kurtis Marschall did not even need to clear 6.00 to take the win, but when Duplantis is anywhere near top form, nobody has come close, until now.
The two 26-year-olds have been competing against each other for over a decade, since Duplantis won gold at the 2015 World Youth Championships and Karalis took bronze.
Duplantis has finished ahead of Karalis in 49 of their 50 meetings, and while the Swede's rise has been meteoric, going beyond 6.00 back in 2018, the Greek took six years longer to reach that height.
Now, Karalis has well and truly arrived.
Having played second fiddle to Duplantis for so long, September's final two events of the season could finally bring an upset as the pair meet at the Diamond League final in Brussels and the World Athletics Ultimate Championships in Budapest.
"I think there's going to be fireworks," Duplantis said.
"His jumping is amazing right now, so I have to bring my A-game. It's gonna take 6.20 or more to win, that's just the level that it is right now, which is really fun."
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
