Reigning European champion Armand Duplantis has put on auction the bib number he wore when he set his first world record in the pole vault to raise money towards battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Duplantis set world records on back-to-back Saturdays in February. He cleared 6.17m at the Copernicus Cup in Torun, the host city of the 2021 European Indoor Championships, before improving by one centimetre to 6.18m in Glasgow seven days later.
The Swede has placed his bib from Torun on Tradera (the bib can be viewed here) and the leading bid for the item with four days to go is already in excess of 10,000 Swedish krona.
The description reads: “Pole vaulter Armand Duplantis is athletics’ new superstar and the 20-year-old has not one - but two world records - in the bag. He set his first world record earlier this year when he jumped 6.17m in Torun. Now Armand is auctioning the bib he wore during the world record jump in Torun to help coronavirus risk groups. The bib is also signed by Armand.”
Duplantis went unbeaten across his five indoor competitions in February and he surpassed the six metre-barrier on each occasion, becoming only the second pole vaulter in history since Sergey Bubka in 1991 to record five successive six metre-plus competitions.