Twenty straight Diamond League wins. It’s why nobody even batted an eye when Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis stepped up for the Stockholm Diamond League. But Australia’s Kurtis Marschall hit 5.9m; Mondo couldn’t break it, and the streak was over. Now a newlywed, the Olympic champion has a score to settle. After all, Marschall’s gold medal win in Stockholm marked the first time in 41 pole vaulting competitions that Duplantis had lost. However, the Swede believes he needs to stay focused and on point to get back on track.

“Yeah, I like it. I’ve jumped very high historically and really, really in warm conditions, so it’s no problem for me. Of course, you need to be a little bit more on point and intentional with your jumping,” Duplantis said ahead of the Paris Diamond League.

“If you’re a little bit sloppy and you take too many jumps, then of course the fatigue can set in. But as long as you’re on point, you’re consistent, and you’re very, very intentional with the jumps, then for me, I think it’s a benefit.”

What Duplantis was pointing to was that he had six attempts throughout the entire Stockholm Diamond League meet. While that may not sound like much, considering Marschall had 10 attempts, Mondo needed only 4 to hit 6.12m in Shanghai. He took three more in an attempt to break his own world record, but failed to cross 6.32m that day.

That’s a typical Mondo trend and has been so for a long time. In fact, during the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, it took only four attempts to hit 6.00m. He then needed one successful attempt each to hit 6.10m and 6.15m before needing three to hit 6.30m. That continued at the 2026 World Indoor Championships, as he took only four attempts to hit 6.10.

He jumped two more times to win gold with a 6.25m mark, which nobody matched. However, that wasn’t the case in Stockholm, and it showed. The 27-year-old has since taken a break and got married on June 12. He hasn’t competed since June 7 and returns to Paris for the first time since he won the Olympic gold in 2024.

The French capital has generally been kind to him; Duplantis set his former world record mark of 6.25m when he won gold. The American-born Swede has since increased that mark to 6.31m and will face Marschall yet again in France. The Stockholm Diamond League winner won’t be the only star posing a threat.

Sam Kendricks and Emmanouil Karalis will also join Marschall and Duplantis alongside the other eight from the top 12 on the world rankings. For Duplantis, though, Stockholm remains fresh in his mind. Reflecting on the defeat, the Olympic champion admitted the loss left him with mixed emotions.

Armand Duplantis reflects on losing in Stockholm

Given that Armand Duplantis was chasing after a world record in Shanghai, few expected the Swede to do anything different in Stockholm. Instead, the home crowd was forced to watch as their favourite fell to a shocking loss, his first in three years. The kicker? Kurtis Marschall, the man who finished ahead of him, just happened to be the man who did the same to him in 2023.

Back then, Marschall finished third while Duplantis finished fourth. ‘Mondo’ followed it up with 41 pole vaulting competitions and 20 straight Diamond League wins over the next three years. So, the loss in Stockholm hit him hard. But the Swede admitted that the Australian was the better jumper that day.

“It’s a feeling like I’ve never felt before, very complicated emotions,” Duplantis told Olympics.com. “I definitely got outplayed and out-jumped, and Kurtis was just better than me… After the competition, I wasn’t empty, but I didn’t feel like the same version of myself when I lose.”

“When I was a kid, I couldn’t accept losing. If I had a bad jump, it felt like the end of the world. But this didn’t feel like the end of the world. There was something very different about this loss, which was obvious to me and my parents too.”

Paris now offers Duplantis the first opportunity to back up that mindset against the man who ended his streak. Whether the promise translates into another world-leading performance or another upset, the rematch with Marschall carries a bit more weight now.