Μake us preferred on Google Emmanouil Karalis has taken another giant step toward the summit of the pole vault, clearing 6.20 meters at the Weltklasse Zürich on Thursday to set a new Greek national outdoor record and become the second-best vaulter in history behind Sweden’s Armand Duplantis.
The 26-year-old Greek champion produced the biggest clearance of his career outdoors just seven days after soaring 6.16 meters in Lausanne, where he pushed Duplantis into one of the most competitive pole-vault contests in recent memory. This time, however, Duplantis responded at 6.25 meters to win the Diamond League meeting, leaving Karalis with another runner-up finish but a performance that further underlined his emergence as the world record-holder’s most consistent challenger.
Karalis’ 6.20 is particularly significant because the height was once the world record. Duplantis cleared 6.20 indoors in Belgrade in 2022 before embarking on the extraordinary sequence of world records that has taken his mark to 6.31 meters. Karalis’ new clearance therefore puts him level with one of the heights that once represented the absolute ceiling of the event.
The performance caps an extraordinary month for Karalis. At the European Championships in Birmingham on Aug. 16, he took silver with 6.00 meters behind Duplantis, who won his fourth consecutive European title with a championship-record 6.15. Four days later in Lausanne, Karalis raised his outdoor best to 6.16, clearing a height that had previously been reached outdoors only by Duplantis and France’s Renaud Lavillenie.
He then cleared 6.00 meters again in Silesia on Aug. 23, finishing second behind Duplantis’ 6.20. The result was significant even without another personal record: Karalis and Norway’s Sondre Guttormsen both cleared six meters, while Duplantis went on to win at 6.20.
Karalis’ progression also gives Greece a rare place at the very top of a discipline historically dominated by a handful of legends. On the personal-best list, Duplantis leads with 6.31 meters, followed by Karalis at 6.20, Lavillenie at 6.16, former world-record holder Sergey Bubka at 6.15 and American KC Lightfoot at 6.07.
