Swedish pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis isn’t just one of the world’s greatest athletes.

He might also be the most financially savvy elite athlete of all-time.

Duplantis, who was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, set the pole vault world record with a vault of 6.28 meters (20 feet, 7 inches for us Americans) over the weekend at an event in Stockholm.

And in doing so, he collected $100,000 thanks to a program set up by World Athletics to reward athletes for breaking records.

Here’s the catch. Duplantis, 25, broke his own world record.

There’s nothing wrong with that. World Athletics does not specify that you must break someone else’s world record. He also broke the world record by just a quarter of an inch. Again, still impressive and not in violation of any rules to collect the cold, hard cash.

BUT. Duplantis is systemic. See, he first set the world record all the way back on February 8, 2020. At the time, his vault of 6.17 meters (20 feet, 2.75 inches), broke the previous record set by Frenchman Renauld Lavellenie six years prior.

In the 5.5 years since, Duplantis has broken his own world record 11 different times! See, Duplantis is far and away the best pole vaulter in the world.

He’s a two-time world champion and a two-time Olympic gold medalist. And he’s also extremely cunning.

Rather than pushing to set some unbreakable record, he continually pushes the record up just .01 of a meter each time, breaking his own record and collecting $100,000 in the process like a perpetual game of pole vault Monopoly.

Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. And Mondo Duplantis clearly has the game down to a science.

World Athletics also can’t really do anything about it.

The incentive program is well-planned and can only be exploited in specific events where an athlete is this far ahead of the pack.

Mondo Duplantis is just one of one, and he’s racking u all kinds of riches in the process.