Mondo Duplantis (AP Photo)

MUMBAI: Fresh from breaking the world record for the 15th time, pole vault superstar Mondo Duplantis is excited about returning to the scene where his extraordinary sequence began. Torun, a city in north-central Poland, will host the world indoors from March 20-22. It’s also where Duplantis etched his name in the record books for the first time in Feb 2020, representing a full-circle moment for an exceptionally gifted athlete who has absolutely dominated his sport in these six years. Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!“Torun is a very special place for me since I broke my first world record there,” the two-time reigning Olympic champion told reporters during a call on Sunday. “I’ve been fortunate enough to break a few since then, but the first one’s always a very life-changing moment.“You go from, in one instance, being not the world record holder, to the world record holder, which is one of my biggest childhood dreams. “I’m just really excited for it, honestly, especially after what I was able to do just now in Uppsala, which was, of course, really good.”If you missed out on Duplantis’s latest feat, the 26-year-old cleared the bar at 6.31m at his home meet, the Mondo Classic, last Thursday. It saw him extend his iron-clad grip on the world record he’s held since eclipsing Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie’s previous mark with a jump of 6.17m six years ago.The three-time indoor and outdoor world champion explained how tweaking his run-up by a couple of steps had played a key role in helping him control a stiffer pole while going for the 6.31m vault. “There was this one stiffer pole that I’d never been able to really just get to work,” he said. “I just couldn’t really make it work at the weight that I like to jump at. And so I was able to make it work this past weekend.“I did a little bit of a change with my approach and my run-up. I usually run from a 20-step approach and I moved it to a 22 step approach, which doesn’t sound like that much of a difference, but it’s actually quite different.“I don’t have speed data, but I think that I was clearly able to add some type of extra energy into the take-off because I was able to use that stiffer pole that I haven’t been able to use for like four years.”For someone who has won 38 straight competitions, with defeat last coming in Aug 2023, Duplantis was asked if he fears that his incredible streak would come to an end. “I never really had that problem,” said the Swede. “I think you can never have too much of a hubris and be over-confident when it comes to sports, and you can just never underestimate your opponents but also the sport itself.“I know that whenever I do the things that I know that I can do, and I focus and I jump the way that I know that I can jump, then I do feel like I’m the best one every time I step out onto the track.”But in “such a difficult sport”, Duplantis stressed, “there’s no slacking off ”. “Especially at this level, it’s like I just always have to bring my A game. I never feel like it’s just given to me,” he said.As to how further, or higher, he could still go, Duplantis said the thrill for him simply lay in “the journey” and “pushing the envelope” as long as he was competing.“I just expect a certain level out of whatever I think is possible on the day, so I’ll just keep pushing it, and as far as I can take it, then that’ll be what it’ll be,” he said.

The Milan Cortina Olympics ended Sunday as the twin flames in co-host cities Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo were extinguished as part of a closing ceremony inside the ancient Verona Arena, roughly mid-distance between the far-flung mountain, valley and city venues that made these the most spread-out Winter Games ever.

In declaring the 2026 Games over, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry told local organizers that they “delivered a new kind of winter games and you set a new, very high standard for the future.”

A total of 116 medal events have been held in eight Olympic sports across 16 disciplines, including the debut of ski mountaineering this year, over the course of 17 days of competition.

The closing ceremony paid tribute to Italian dance and music — from lyric opera to Italian pop of the 20th century to the DJ beat of Gabry Ponte, who got the 1,500 athletes on their feet for an upbeat dance number while colour confetti exploded on stage.

Earlier, the 2026 Winter Olympians filed into the arena waving small national flags to a rousing medley of Italian pop hits from the 20th century as the crowd sang along, taking their seats in the stone arena in places marked by green, red and white lights for the Italian flag.

The Canadian Olympic Committee said approximately 90 of Canada’s 207 athletes in Milan Cortina marched in the closing ceremony, with speedskater Valérie Maltais and short-track speedskater Steven Dubois carrying the Canadian flag into the stadium.

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The 2 1/2-hour ceremony opened with a whimsical tribute to Italian lyric opera, with the stage director rousing not only the closing ceremony cast, including Italian singer Achille Lauro, but also long-dormant opera characters tucked away in crates within the amphitheatre’s tunnels.

On stage, Madama Butterfly in a bright pink and green costume and Aida in golden tiers were unpacked from mirrored crates while 17th century musicians played the joyous “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” from La Traviata, a nod to the Arena’s long history as the venue for a summer opera festival.

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Milano-Cortina Olympics: Brendan Mackay speaks after bronze medal win in men’s ski halfpipe

The opera characters, led by the jester Rigoletto, spilled out into the piazza outside, mixing with the bemused athletes who were flag-bearers for their countries, some ofwhom pulled out their phones to film.

In a key moment, the Olympic flame encased in a Venetian glass vessel was carried into the Arena by Italian gold medallists from the 1994 Lillehammer Games. The Olympic rings illuminated in white appeared high on the stone stairs behind the stage, flanked by national flags, when one raised the flame in the centre of the stage.

This was the first Olympics for Coventry, a two-time Olympic champion in swimming, who watched much of the ceremony alongside Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Some 12,000 spectators joined the athletes and officials for the closing ceremony, which was much more intimate affair than the opening ceremony starring Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli inside Milan’s San Siro soccer stadium, attended by more than 60,000 people.

Key moments included the Olympic flag is handed over to the next Winter Games host nation, France.

The Milan Cortina Games spanned an area of 22,000 square kilometres (8,500 square miles), from ice sports in Milan to biathlon in Anterselva on the Austrian border, snowboarding and men’s downhill in Valtellina on the Swiss border, cross-country skiing in the Val di Fiemme north of Verona and women’s downhill, curling and sliding sports in co-host Cortina d’Ampezzo.

It’s a model that will remain for future Games, to avoid the expense of building new facilities. The 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps will stage events in the Alps and Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, while speedskating will be held abroad in a venue to be decided.

The closing ceremony concluded with the Olympic flames extinguished at the unprecedented two cauldrons in Milan and Cortina, viewed in Verona via video link. A light show substituted fireworks, which are not allowed in Verona, to protect animals from being disturbed.

The Milan Cortina Paralympics’ opening ceremony will also take place in the Verona Arena, on March 6, and the Games will run until March 15.

&copy 2026 The Canadian Press

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Lindsey Vonn, racing on a badly injured left knee, crashed early in the Olympic downhill on Sunday and was taken off the course by a helicopter after the 41-year-old American received medical attention on the snow for long, anguished minutes.

Vonn lost control over the opening traverse after cutting the line too tight and was spun around in the air. She was heard screaming out after the crash as she was surrounded by medical personnel before she was strapped to a gurney and flown away by a helicopter, possibly ending the skier’s storied career. Her condition was not immediately known, with the U.S. Ski Team saying simply she would be evaluated.

Breezy Johnson, Vonn’s teammate, won gold and became only the second American woman to win the Olympic downhill after Vonn did it 16 years ago. The 30-year-old Johnson held off Emma Aicher of Germany and Italy’s Sofia Goggia on a bittersweet day for Team USA.

Vonn had family in the stands, including her father, Alan Kildow, who stared down at the ground while his daughter was being treated after just 13 seconds on the course. Others in the crowd, including rapper Snoop Dogg, watched quietly as the star skier was finally taken off the course she knows so well and holds a record 12 World Cup wins.

Vonn’s crash was “tragic, but it’s ski racing,” said Johan Eliasch, president of the Internationl Ski and Snowboard Federation.

“I can only say thank you for what she has done for our sport,” he said, “because this race has been the talk of the games and it’s put our sport in the best possible light.”

All eyes had been on Vonn, the feel-good story heading into the Olympics. She had returned to elite ski racing last season after nearly six years, a remarkable decision given her age but she also had a partial titanium knee replacement in her right knee, too. Many wondered how she would fare as she sought a gold medal to join the one she won in the downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

The four-time overall World Cup champion stunned everyone by being a contender almost immediately. She came to the Olympics as the leader in the World Cup downhill standings and was a gold-medal favorite before her crash in Switzerland nine days ago, when she suffered her latest knee injury. In addition to a ruptured ACL, she also had a bone bruise and meniscus damage.

Still, no one counted her out even then. In truth, she has skied through injuries for three decades at the top of the sport. In 2006, ahead of the Turin Olympics, Vonn took a bad fall during downhill training and went to the hospital. She competed less than 48 hours later, racing in all four events she’d planned, with a top result of seventh in the super-G.

“It’s definitely weird,” she said then, “going from the hospital bed to the start gate.”

Cortina has always had many treasured memories for Vonn beyond the record wins. She is called the queen of Cortina, and the Olympia delle Tofana is a course that had always suited Vonn. She tested out the knee twice in downill training runs over the past three days before the awful crash on Sunday in clear, sunny conditions.

“This would be the best comeback I’ve done so far,” Vonn said before the race. “Definitely the most dramatic.”

After the crash, the celebration for the medalists was held and fellow skiers thought about Vonn’s legacy.

“She has been my idol since I started watching ski racing,” said Kajsa Vickhoff Lie of Norway. “We still have a World Cup to do after Olympics … I wouldn’t be surprised if she suddenly shows up on the start gate, but the crash didn’t look good.”

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