History will be made on Sunday 3 May when an historic live streamed long-distance pole vault event competition called Ultimate Garden Clash will be staged.
Swedens’s World record-holder Mondo Duplantis, two-time world champion Sam Kendricks of the United States and 2012 Olympic champion Renaud Lavillenie of France will be connected via a live video link as they compete from of their own back gardens in a special pole vault contest that no one has seen before.
This will be a very unique pole vault competition. The athletes will try to clear 5.00m height as many times as they can within 30 minutes.
Lavillenie will vault from his home in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Kendricks will compete from his back yard in Oxford, Mississippi, US and Duplantis will contest from his training place in Lafayette, Louisiana, US.
I’m ecstatic to be able to compete again, especially against Sam and Renaud,” said Duplantis. “Since it’s unknown what other competitions we will all have together, we definitely are going to enjoy this and have a good time with it. Also, winning this is crucial because I don’t like losing to them very much.”
“This is a superb opportunity to see the best jumpers in a new competition format showing their love for their sport with a competition when most other sports are off,” added Lavillenie. “And because we are all at home, we have no excuses to miss this international home competition.”
Kendricks said: “Because it’s a unique style of competing, I think we will all be learning as we go. No matter how precise and accurate we are, I think the challenge is we don’t know what it will take to win, so it will be hard to gauge our effort. I know that it doesn’t matter what we are doing together. We each want to win.”
The Ultimate Garden Clash – Pole Vault edition will be streamed live World-wide on the World Athletics YouTube, Twitter and Facebook pages. The event is set on Sunday Sunday between 5-6pm Central European Time.