Mondo Duplantis has spent much of his career making ridiculous heights look strangely routine.
His latest attempt to clear the bar is rather different: the Swedish pole vault world record-holder and two-time Olympic champion has released Gold, a song he co-wrote and performs as the official anthem for the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest.
The timing is hardly accidental. World Athletics is trying to give its new showpiece an identity before the first medal has been won, and attaching that identity to one of the sport’s most recognisable athletes is neat casting.
Duplantis is not merely fronting somebody else’s track, either. He wrote Gold with Carl Silvergran and Oscar Chase, with Chase also producing it.
Mondo Duplantis has been making music for years
The athlete-to-musician crossover can be a treacherous little bridge. Plenty have crossed it; fewer have made anyone grateful they did. Duplantis, though, has at least put in the hours.
Represented by Sony Music Sweden, he has spent years writing and producing music alongside his athletics career, working between Stockholm and Louisiana, where he grew up. According to the World Athletics material announcing the release, his music has accumulated more than 11 million streams on Spotify.
That makes Gold less a novelty single than a very public extension of an existing side career. The track has now been released across major streaming services, including Spotify and Apple Music.
Why ‘Gold’ fits the Ultimate Championship
There is, admittedly, nothing bashful about calling a championship anthem Gold. Then again, elite sport has rarely suffered from an excess of understatement.
Duplantis says the song is intended to reach beyond individual success.
“I wrote the song around representing something that’s a lot bigger than yourself,” said Duplantis. “I think that’s what we all do when we’re on the track. We represent our family, our team, our coaches, and I love that concept. Music and sports are the two things that bring people together in the best way, and Gold is an expression of that.”
World Athletics plans to use the track throughout the Ultimate Championship broadcast and in-stadium production. Duplantis is also scheduled to perform it live after the competition closes on Sunday 13 September.
Budapest gets a starring role in the video
The accompanying music video was filmed in Budapest, host city for the championship from 11–13 September. Fisherman’s Bastion and Heroes’ Square appear among the locations, giving the production a recognisable sense of place rather than the usual anonymous parade of studio lights and slow-motion hero shots.
The video also uses childhood and early-career archive footage of Duplantis alongside later sporting moments. Family, friends, fellow pole vaulters and other track and field athletes appear too.
It is a sensible creative choice. If a song is supposed to be about representing more than yourself, the film needs more than one immaculate athlete staring meaningfully into the middle distance.
World Athletics is building a new flagship
The wider task is more serious than producing a catchy chorus. The Ultimate Championship is World Athletics’ attempt to create a recurring “champion of champions” event, bringing together world champions, Olympic champions, Wanda Diamond League winners and the year’s top-ranked athletes.
The competition is due to run every two years and carries a $10 million prize pot.
For a new event, recognition is half the battle. Established championships have decades of memory, imagery and ritual to lean on; this one has to manufacture familiarity at speed.
That explains the importance of the anthem. Gold is being asked to do branding work, broadcast work and emotional work all at once.
Another stage for Mondo Duplantis
Duplantis already arrives with the sort of sporting credibility organisers cannot manufacture. Making him the face — and voice — of the Ultimate Championship gives World Athletics an athlete who can plausibly carry attention beyond the pole vault runway.
Whether Gold becomes inseparable from the event will depend on more than streaming figures. Anthems earn their place through repetition, atmosphere and the moments people remember while they are playing.
Still, there is something fitting about Duplantis taking on a discipline where the bar is harder to measure. In Budapest, he will find out whether a stadium that knows how to watch him fly is equally willing to listen.
