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Name: Armand Duplantis
Sport: Athletics
Key achievement: The 25-year-old retained his Olympic pole vault title in Paris – becoming the first back-to-back champion in men’s pole vault since the 1950s.
In doing so, he broke both the Olympic and world record – the latter for the ninth time in his career, and second time this year.
He went on to break the world record again later in August, setting a new best of 6.26m at the Diamond League meeting in Silesia, and also won a second world indoor title and third European gold in 2024.