Armand Duplantis will make his season’s debut at the All Star Perche in Clermont-Ferrand, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver meeting, on Sunday (22) afternoon.
The All-Star Perche is a familiar setting for the Swede who has broken the world record twice at this meeting before. Duplantis cleared 6.22m in 2023 before improving to 6.27m last year, his first of four records set in 2025 which culminated with a 6.30m clearance at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
Duplantis is planning a brief indoor season, including the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Kujawy Pomorze from 20-22 March when he will be aiming for his fourth successive title. He will also compete in the Mondo Classic in Uppsala on 12 March.
A world record is always a possibility when Duplantis takes to the runway but his first objective in Clermont-Ferrand will be to secure the victory over an all-star line-up which includes Greece’s Emmanouil Karalis who emerged as a prospective challenger to Duplantis last year.
Karalis cleared 6.00m or higher on 12 occasions last year, including a 6.08m clearance at the Greek Championships to become the fourth highest vaulter in history behind Duplantis and Renaud Lavillenie and Sergey Bubka, his predecessors as world record-holder.
And Karalis has carried this form into the 2026 season. He achieved the first 6.00m vault of the year in Lievin on Thursday (19) evening with a world leading clearance of 6.00m and had two very close attempts at 6.07m.
Incidentally, Karalis does have one career victory over Duplantis although that win dates all the way back to the 2018 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Birmingham when they were both still juniors. On that day, Karalis finished fifth to Duplantis' seventh.
The men’s line-up also includes Kurtis Marschall from Australia, the bronze medallist behind Duplantis and Karalis at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, as well as US record-holder KC Lightfoot and 2024 Olympic silver medallist Sam Kendricks while the French contingent is pronged by Baptiste Thiery, Ethan Cormant and Anthony Ammirati.
The favourite for the women’s pole vault is Slovenia’s Tina Sutej who is arguably in the form of her life at the age of 37. Sutej is unbeaten in three competitions this year and has cleared 4.80m, just two centimetres shy of her national record which dates back to 2023.
Sutej faces a field including France’s Marie Julie Bonnin, who defeated the Slovenian for the world indoor title in Nanjing last year, and Czechia’s Amalie Svabikova who finished one place behind Sutej in fourth at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
Last year’s winner Angelica Moser from Switzerland is a late withdrawal.