Jonas Karlsson: Caution Advised When Congratulating Almgren

Magical Mondo is soon to be one of the greatest of all time. But I am more impressed by Andreas Almgren.

When I first traveled to Louisiana in 2016 to interview Armand Duplantis, I met a 16-year-old obsessed with pole vaulting.

In the pole vault pit in his yard, Mondo imitated old jumpers, did flips, and vaulted using a hoverboard.

Then, as now, he always played with pole vaulting.

But suddenly, the infectious smile disappeared. Mondo became serious.

"I want to win everything there is to win and achieve everything there is to achieve," he said.

At that moment, it was hard to relate to it. We've all had dreams. This tended towards delusions of grandeur. But he said it with such humble conviction that I included it in the report.

Now Mondo is 25 and has checked off his goals. The question is, what will drive him higher?

He has oscillated between records and rehab

He already has money. Competitors are not closing in from below. He will never win the most championship golds.

In modern times, Carl Lewis has nine Olympic golds. Usain Bolt has eight.

If there were pole vaulting with a short run-up, heavy pole, or jumping with a high hat, Mondo would already spell GOAT.

Perhaps he will still be that when we sum up his career.

With his pole, he continues to enchant the audience and create magic.

On Sunday, he broke yet another world record. And the passion still seems as intense as that of the boy I met in the sticky South nearly ten years ago.

Yet there is a Swedish athlete I am more impressed by right now.

Andreas Almgren. The 30-year-old, whose athletic existence has oscillated between records and rehab.

I call Almgren. He is on a mountaintop in Switzerland where he will spend six weeks in pursuit of more red blood cells.

And there he is forced to take it easy.

A little motivation for the national team colleagues who mutter?

I don't ask if he was transported down in a padded box marked "Fragile." I just assume it. Almgren's body has been so fragile that it made the most radioactive isotopes seem stable.

While Mondo's career has been injury-free and improbably straight – 17 of the 19 years he has competed, he has raised his personal record – Almgren's journey has repeatedly led him into dark dead ends.

I ask how he has endured and get the answer that he loves running.

Passion has driven him too.

Along the way, he has also had other things to focus on. He is soon to have a degree in industrial economics and until recently worked part-time.

Possibly a little motivation for the national team colleagues who mutter about living on the brink of existence?

In fact, Almgren's entire career should somehow be materialized and exhibited as inspiration in every Swedish athletics hall.

Andreas Almgren is the involuntary long-distance runner. All the injuries have forced him to longer distances.

When he finally decided to try 5000 meters, he looked at Anders Gärderud's Swedish record and noted that it required lap times under 64 seconds.

It felt unreasonable.

Now he runs the laps in just over 61.

Now he has a European record.

Consult a Pole if you don't believe me

It's hard to compare running over time. New shoes have partly created new conditions.

Almgren runs in his Dragonfly, and they certainly make a few seconds compared to old times. But since 2021, the technological development has leveled out, and therefore we can more easily compare in the near term.

In 2021 and 2022, no one in the world ran faster than Andreas Almgren did on Sunday.

That his enormous 12:44 was overshadowed by Mondo-mania is only natural for a man with Almgren's bad luck.

The shoes probably also help Mondo run faster. But when it comes to the poles, technology stands still. And there I find yet another reason to hold Mondo as one of the greatest athletes of all time. What he does, he does with the same material used in the 90s.

If you don't believe me, you can consult a Pole.

Piotr Lisek came to the Diamond League gala in Monaco in 2019. However, his poles did not, as they disappeared along the way.

In a desperate attempt to solve the problem, Lisek threw himself under the stands at Stade Louis II. Like a mad badger, he rummaged through every space he found until he dug up Sergei Bubka's old poles, which had been there for decades.

Lisek wiped off the dust and went out and won the competition at 6.02. Twelfth of all time.

Andreas Almgren is now twelfth of all time. Nine seconds from the world record.

The record was magnificent but far from perfect

As the mathematician he is, he knows that it means 0.72 seconds per lap.

It sounds small, but at his level, every tenth means another layer of pain.

The magnitude of this becomes understandable when he suddenly says during our conversation that he has not run a single 5000-meter race that he has not considered quitting because it hurts so much.

But every time he decides to embrace the pain.

200 meters at a time. Bite down. This is what you love. 200 meters more. Survive.

The European record on Sunday was magnificent, but far from perfect.

So be careful when you congratulate him. Shake hands gently. Only light pats on the back.

We need Almgren whole.

For there is more time to cut.

And more magic to create.