There was a Scandinavian double in April with Sweden’s Armand Duplantis and Norway’s Amalie Iuel voted Male and Female Athlete of the Month.
Duplantis is the reigning world U18 pole vault champion and the 17-year-old is destined for senior stardom. He cleared a world U20 record of 5.82m indoors and in his first outdoor competition of the season, Duplantis added eight centimetres to that mark with a 5.90m clearance at the Texas Relays in Austin.
Not only was that mark a world-lead, he also surpassed the Swedish senior record. He will begin as the outstanding favourite for continental honours at the European U20 Championships in Grosseto this July and he will be in medal contention if he can produce that sort of form at the World Championships in London in August.
Duplantis was voted Male Athlete of the Month with over 700 votes across Facebook and Twitter ahead of Greece’s Ioannis Kiriazis, who also came to prominence at the Texas Relays with a Greek U23 record and since-beaten world-lead of 88.01m.
There was also a first-time winner on the women’s side with Amalie Iuel garnering more than a thousand votes across Facebook and Twitter.
Iuel broke the 33-year-old Norwegian 400m hurdles record at the European Championships in Amsterdam last summer with 55.79 and she lowered her best ever time to a European-leading 55.38 in Baton Rouge on 8 April.