Armand Duplantis en route to his 5.88m world U20 record in Clermont-Ferrand (© Jean-Pierre Durand)
Sam Kendricks and Renaud Lavillenie cleared a world-leading 5.93m at the All Star Perche pole vault meeting in the central French city of Clermont-Ferrand on Sunday (25).
In what turned out to be the deepest competition ever, world champion Kendricks prevailed on countback over the world record-holder, who organised and hosted the meeting for the third consecutive year in his hometown. Kendricks sailed clear on his first attempt while Lavillenie succeeded on his third. Both topped out with three efforts at 5.98m.
An unprecedented seven men topped 5.88m, including Armand Duplantis of Sweden who twice broke the pending world U20 record of 5.78m set by Emmanouil Karalis of Greece on 11 February. The 18-year-old first topped 5.81m on his first attempt before improving the record to 5.88m* on his third try.
Duplantis finished fifth, behind Pawel Wojciechowski of Poland and Frenchman Axel Chapelle, who also cleared 5.88m. Pole Piotr Lisek, sixth, and Kevin Menaldo of France, seventh, also topped 5.88m.
With eight men clearing 5.81m and 10 men vaulting 5.73m, this competition set best marks-for-place for positions third through to 11th.
On the women's side, Katie Nageotte's impressive late-season momentum continued.
The US champion collected her fourth victory in six outings this year after defeating 2015 European indoor champion Anzhelika Sidorova on countback at 4.86m. Both carried clean cards to the decisive height with Nageotte clearing on her second attempt and Sidorova clearing on her third.
French champion Ninon Guillon-Romarin was third with a national record of 4.72m.
US quartet breaks world indoor 4x400m record
All three teams that raced in the men's 4x800m at the Boston University Last Chance Qualifier on Sunday (25) finished inside the previous world indoor record of 7:13.11, but the victory - and the record - went to the Hoka NJNY Track Club squad.
Joe McAsey got the team off to a solid start with a 1:49.03 effort before handing to Kyle Merber, whose 1:47.11 ended up being the fastest split of the team.
Chris Giesting put in another sub-1:48 stint with 1:47.43 and Jesse Garn then anchored the team by covering the four final laps in 1:47.73.
They finished in 7:11.30 to take almost two seconds off the previous world indoor record.
The Atlanta Track Club (7:11.84) and the District of Columbia team (7:12.25) finished close behind in second and third respectively.
McLaughlin breaks world U20 indoor 400m record
On a busy weekend of US collegiate action, the highlights came from the SEC Indoor Championships at College Station, Texas, courtesy of Sydney McLaughlin and Lynna Irby.
After running a world-leading PB of 50.97 in the 400m heats on Saturday, McLaughlin returned for the final 24 hours later and went even quicker. The 2015 world U18 400m hurdles champion went through the first lap in 23.75 and held on for the win in 50.52, breaking Sanya Richards-Ross’s world indoor U20 record* and moving to second on the North American indoor all-time list, just 0.06 behind Phyllis Francis.
Irby, the world U20 400m silver medallist and still just 19 years of age, finished strongly and almost caught McLaughlin on the line, but settled for second place with 50.62.
Little more than an hour later, Irby was back on track for the 200m and sped to a world-leading 22.66 clocking to win by 0.15 from Mikiah Brisco. Brisco had earlier won the 60m in 7.10.
Two weeks after setting a Jamaican indoor 400m record of 45.02, Akeem Bloomfield came close to that mark to win over two laps of the track in 45.22. Nathan Strother was second in 45.59.
Bob Ramsak and Jon Mulkeen for the IAAF
*Pending the usual ratification procedures
