San Francisco Frontiers - Marschall hands 'lucky' Duplantis first pole vault loss since 2023

In other events, Audrey Werro set the fastest time in the women's 800m in 43 years, teenager Cooper Lutkenhaus sparkled on his Diamond League debut and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden won in her first 100m of the season.

Duplantis said he hoped the defeat would prove a good romantic omen.

"I'm getting maried in about a week's time, there's a lot around that but I don't want to make that an excuse," he said.

"We have a saying in Swedish, that you're either lucky in games or your lucky in love.

"In some really strange way I think there some funny message or silver lining to this whole thing that maybe its saying something about the commitment I'm about to make in my marriage.

"I really believe in that right now."

He added he hoped he only needed to suffer one defeat.

"I lost at my home stadium here in Stockholm, so much family here, the worst thing that could happen to me," he said as he wrestled with the logical implications of his statement.

"I think this loss will keep the love lucky for quite a while probably for ever."

The last time Duplantis failed to win was in the Monaco Diamond League meeting in 2023, when he finished tied for fourth and Australian Kurtis Marschall was third.

Since then, Duplantis has raised the world record nine more times to 6.31, set in Uppsala, Sweden, in March. The stage was set for the American-born Swedish star to again hit new heights before his fans, and family, but he struggled with the conditions.

Marschall outjumped and out-bluffed Duplantis.

They were the only two competitors left after Duplantis cleared 5.80m.

Marschall then went over at 5.90m.

After Duplantis failed at 6.0m, Marschall passed, forcing Duplantis to lift the bar to 6.05m where he failed again.

"Big hats off to Kurtis," said Duplantis. "He was the better man and beat me fair and square."

"We had a little bit of a tough wind, but I didn't jump that well," said Duplantis. "I felt I was pretty unfocussed."

- 'I feel pretty old' -

Jefferson-Wooden, running her first 100m since taking the world title last September in Tokyo, bounced back from her 200m defeat in the Rome Diamond League meet as she cruised to victory.

"I'm really happy I was able to come out and perform after Rome three days ago, that being my first race of the year," she said at the finish.

Two months after becoming the youngest world champion, the indoors in Poland in March, 17-year-old Lutkenhaus won on his Diamond League debut, outfoxing an experienced 800m field to surge through on the home straight and win in 1 minute 42.70 seconds.

"I'm young but I feel pretty old sometimes," he said.

In the women's 800m, Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson overtook Audrey Werro just after the bell. The Swiss runner hit back to regain the lead on the final bend and win in a 1:53.98, the third-fastest time in history.

The only two women to have run faster were Czech Jarmila Kratochvilova, when she set the current world mark of 1:53.28 in 1983, and Soviet runner Nadezhda OLizarenko, who had set the previous record in 1980.

"A crazy performance will need a while to process what happened," Werro said.

"Every day for two years I repeat to myself 'I am the best', sometimes it's really hard to believe but if you repeat this every day you can do great things," she added.

Hodgkinson set a British record with 1:54.33 in second.

E.Jones--SFF