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Armand Duplantis will receive achievement gold from Svenska Dagbladet in 2020 and there has probably been no more obvious winner since the days of Björn Borg and Ingemar Stenmark.
Two world records indoors and the world’s highest jump outdoors.
You can’t get higher.
Add to that that this has been a sports year marked by crown, canceled competitions and championships.
The Olympic medals that always seem to impress the jury of feats were never awarded.
But I’m pretty sure Armand “Mondo” Duplantis won even though it was an Olympics in Tokyo. Gold would have been important to him if he hadn’t gotten hurt or sick.
Is superior
He is the most superior athlete in the world right now.
It was unbeatable in 2020, where the men’s pole vault was one of the few disciplines in which competition was held and where the best participated.
Yes, not only unbeatable.
He was superior.
And I think it fulfills each and every one of the points of the SvD bylaws that say:
Achievement in this context means a high-ranking decision, won through an exceptional range of technical and tactical knowledge, will to win and energy coupled with sporting ambition.
The value of the trick should be considered increased in the event that the decision was made in a difficult and difficult situation.
A series of feats means a higher qualification for the award. Exemplary sportsmanship is required and will be rewarded. “
The moment of achievement itself is therefore only a small part of the whole, but this with “difficult and difficult situation” has rarely been better than in the case of Mondo.
An achievement greater than the two world records
After a sensational season indoors with world records in both Polish Torun (6.17) and Scottish Glasgow (6.18), the crown struck.
Not least in the United States, where Mondo spends the winter months.
The gym closed, the sports fields were blocked again, and Mondo was relegated to the limited backyard outside the family home in Louisiana, where it all started around the same time he learned to walk.
When the outdoor season began, he had lost weight and muscle and the speed of the approach that had him navigating world record heights a few months earlier, and gossiping about more, he was no longer there.
He had to try racing and training to catch up on his new ground, Uppsala, and he knew he was setting the bar to a height he couldn’t reach.
Then he set a new goal.
Trying to beat Sergei Bubka’s outdoor record of 6.14.
And when he jumped his 6.15 in Rome in September, I saw it as an achievement greater than the two indoor world records.
He had to lower the bar though.
Photo: ALEKSANDRA SZMIGIEL / BILDBYRÅN
For Mondo to get the gold medal it felt more like a formality this time.
And I’m equally confident that he will join the unique gang that won the gold medal two years in a row, even if it’s always tougher a second time.
This has not happened since Anja Pärson received the award in 2006 and 2007.
The boy is only 21 and this is just the beginning.
Believe me
The only competitors I saw this year were Victor Hedman from hockey and Zlatan from soccer.
But since they are team athletes, I saw them disqualified from the beginning.
I don’t know why, but it seems impossible for individual players to take home Sweden’s biggest prize.
The last time this happened was in 1969, when soccer player Ove Kindvall received the award. I myself sat in Råsunda and watched him score the two fantastic goals against France that led Sweden to the World Cup and I thought it was more than deserved.
But in the 51 years since then, no player from the two biggest Swedish team sports has received the award.
Hill Victor Hedman, who was named the Most Valuable Player of the Stanley Cup Playoffs as he led his Tampa Bay Lightning to the club’s second Stanley Cup title, was pleased to be a pre-talk candidate.
Like Zlatan. Despite an astonishing comeback in Milan and dominating the scorer at 39, he is a physical phenomenon that everyone talks about.
He only rated them as challengers, but I saw it mostly as filler.
Especially when I think of all those who have been misjudged before.
“It wasn’t enough either”
Foppa, who became a record young member of the triple gold club at age 22 in 1996.
He then won the Stanley Cup with his Colorado after winning World Cup gold at the age of 18 in 1992 and Olympic gold at Lillehammer in 1994. Yes, the latter was not enough either, despite the world’s most famous decisive penalty in the world hockey.
Or Mats Sundin, who almost only shot Tre Kronor to World Cup gold in Finland in 1991.
And above all:
Not even Zlatan, who combed twelve golden balls.
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