Mondo Duplantis and Emmanouil 'Manolo' Karalis look set to do battle in Budapest.
Five titles at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship are up for grabs in the men’s field events: high jump, pole vault, long jump, hammer and javelin. Each winner will go home with their bank balance boosted by U$150,000.
Already battles are brewing to decide the Ultimate Champions and here, in the third instalment of a four-part series, we take a look at some of the best current head-to-heads.
Hammer
He’s been likened to Thor while his long hair and moustache combination has had social media querying whether he is more Australian than Canadian. Amid it all, there’s no denying Ethan Katzberg is the benchmark for the hammer throw.
Moments after winning a second world title and third global gold by the age of 23, he immediately turned his attention to the Ultimate Championship.
In Budapest, he anticipates the hammer will take centre stage in front of a fanbase in rapture to the event and the locals will make no secret of their favourite, Hungary’s Bence Halász, who was the first man to throw over 80 metres this season.
That mark may have since been bettered by Katzberg with a season's best 82.43m in Nairobi in April but Halász, the Olympic silver medallist, will be confident of again being part of the podium in Hungary.
The signs for the sport are promising after a world final in which three men went over 82 metres with Canadian Katzberg hurling it 84.70m, the furthest throw by anyone in 20 years. He is, however, under no illusions over who people will be supporting: “They’ll be cheering Bence on.”
High jump
New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr has won the past two outdoor global titles, backing up his Olympic gold to become world champion last year as the only man to sail over 2.36m. Instead of the World Indoor Championships in Toruń, he opted for a seven-week training block on the Gold Coast to prepare for the outdoor season.
In his absence, Ukraine’s Oleh Doroshchuk finally shook off his nearly-man tag in clearing 2.30m for victory in a contest that saw Mexico’s Erick Portillo surprise for silver and Korea’s defending champion Woo Sanghyeok get bronze.
Woo had already managed a 2.30m clearance in the early part of 2026 but others had fared better. Jan Štefela, who rounded off the Tokyo podium just behind Woo, started the contest having cleared 2.32m.
Pole vault
For a time, fans were talking about another athlete in this event in the early part of 2026 – a potential challenger to Mondo Duplantis’ hegemony.
Emmanouil ‘Manolo’ Karalis cleared a staggering 6.17m – bettering his previous best by 12 centimetres – in February to put him second on the world all-time list.
Sure, Duplantis has since gone well past that with a 15th world record of 6.31m at the Mondo Classic in March. But Karalis suggested there’s plenty left in the tank after his 6.17m at the Greek Indoor Championships when he went over that height with room to spare. And while Duplantis won world indoor gold, he credited Karalis with piling the pressure on.
But it’s not just that top two, with four other men – including their fellow major medallists Sondre Guttormsen and Kurtis Marschall – all having surpassed the six-metre barrier so far in 2026.
