2023 World Athletics Championships – Men's pole vault

The men's pole vault at the 2023 World Athletics Championships was held at the National Athletics Centre in Budapest on 23 and 26 August 2023.

Summary
Rather than apply tiebreakers, all 13 who cleared 5.75m in the preliminary round qualified for the final. Two of them were unable to clear 5.75 again in the final. Through the next height of 5.85m, only five got over the bar. World record holder / defending champion Armand Duplantis and Thibaut Collet remained perfect. At 5.90m Ernest John Obiena, Chris Nilsen and Collet cleared on their first attempt. Kurtis Marschall missed his first attempt, then passed to the next height. Duplantis passed it entirely. At 5.95m, Marschall redeemed his pass, with a first attempt clearance. Marschall is one of only three people to have bested Duplantis in a global competition, at the 2016 U20 Championships when Marschall was 19 and Duplantis was 17. Obiena, Duplantis and Nilsen all followed along making it on their first attempts. Collet missed. The tie was broken putting Duplantis into the lead. Collet passed to the next height, 6 metres. Only Obiena and Duplantis had made 6.00 this year. Duplantis made it easily on his first attempt. Obiena made it on his second. None of the others were able to get over the bar. With two misses each earlier in the competition, Nilsen and Marschall were left with bronze. So Obiena and Duplantis would go to 6.05m. Obiena missed his first attempt, after Duplantis made his first attempt, Obiena passed to the next scheduled height, 6.10m. No previous competition had two competitors left in the competition at. Only Sergey Bubka, Renaud Lavillenie and Duplantis had ever made it. Inexperienced at this height, Obiena missed his first attempt. Duplantis made it to remain perfect through the competition. After Obiena failed on his final attempt, Duplantis was confirmed for the gold medal. Now it was time to move the bar up to a world record attempt. Nobody had ever made an attempt at before. With the crowd eagerly watching and clapping in unison, over the next 20 minutes Duplantis made three attempts, but as in all pole vault competitions, they either end in withdrawal or failure. Duplantis failed to set a new record on this night.

Records
Before the competition records were as follows:

Qualification standard
The standard to qualify automatically for entry was 5.81 m.

Schedule
The event schedule, in local time (UTC+2), was as follows:

Qualification
Qualification: 5.80 m (Q) or at least 12 best performers (q).

Final
The final started on 26 August at 19:25.