Armand Duplantis heads into the Weltklasse meeting in Zurich with the world record firmly in his sights. “This is the biggest competition, it would be great to break a world record here,” the Swedish pole vaulter told a press conference ahead of one of the Diamond League’s marquee nights.
Duplantis has taken aim at 6.32 metres in each of his last two Diamond League outings, winning both meetings but falling short of clearing the bar. No pole vaulter has set an outdoor world record so far in 2026, and the Zurich fixture offers him another high-profile chance to push the mark higher.
A victory in Zurich would be his third at the Weltklasse, one of track and field’s most storied one-day meetings. His most recent world record came earlier in the year at his own event in Uppsala in March, part of a steady climb that has seen him rewrite the discipline’s ceiling time and again.
The 2026 season has brought sharper competition. Greece’s Emmanouil Karalis has pushed him closely, and at the most recent meeting in Poland, Norway’s Sondre Guttormsen joined the chase as well. For Duplantis, the rise of rivals is a mixed blessing.
“It’s fun, I get pressured and people like it,” he said. “But it also makes the competitions longer and I have to do more jumps.” That balance, between the spectacle a record attempt creates and the physical toll of a drawn-out contest, will shape how the night in Zurich unfolds.
