What happened to Sweden's athletics superstar Carolina Kluft?

Just as Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis is today's Swedish athletics superstar, Caroline Kluft successfully represented her country in the first decade of the 2000s in the heptathlon and pentathlon. Let's take a look back on Kluft's journey and life at the top. All stats and career info are sourced from World Athletics, unless otherwise stated.

Kluft was born on 2 February 1983 in Sandhult, Sweden. Her talent as a youngster was undeniable, and she quickly rose to fame as a junior. In 2002, she became the IAAF world junior heptathlon champion in Kingston (Jamaica), setting a new world junior record, but she soon took the senior circuit by storm.

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That same year, she impressed at the European Championships in Munich (Germany), beating double world champion Sabine Braun to the European heptathlon title with yet another world junior record.

Europe was at Kluft's feet, the world was soon to follow in 2003, when the Swede won the world pentathlon (indoor) and heptathlon titles. At the World Outdoor Championships, she scored 7,001 points, making her only the third woman in history to break the 7,000-point barrier, per Runner's World.

Kluft was on top of the world, and she took that feeling with her to the 2004 Olympics in Athens. She managed to live up to the high expectations and took the gold medal in the heptathlon, displaying a big smile on the podium that just said it all and went around the world.

However, there was still a lot left in Kluft's career: she won another European heptathlon title, in Gothenburg, and two more world titles, in Helsinki and Osaka, amongst other trophies.

Her world heptathlon title in Osaka in 2007, in particular, was one for the history books. Kluft scored 7,032 points, which placed her second on the all-time women's list and reinforced her legendary status in Sweden and abroad.

A year later, the superstar made a drastic decision: she would no longer focus on the heptathlon, but on the long jump - in which she already enjoyed success - and the triple jump. This meant that she would not be defending her Olympic title at the Beijing Olympics, where she did not win any medals.

Kluft then saw her 2008 and 2009 seasons marred by injuries and needed surgery to become fully fit again, but she would never dominate again like she did before. In 2011, she came in fourth in the long jump at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, her last major result on the international scene.

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In 2012, Kluft had planned to retire after the London Olympics, but was ruled out of the event due to a hamstring injury, per The Daily Mail. She finally called it quits in September of the same year, after ten years of great triumphs.

Throughout her career, Kluft received many major trophies and was internationally acclaimed, winning the European Athlete of the Year award in 2003 and 2006, per European Athletics.

In 2007, Kluft married former pole vaulter Arne Patrik Kristianson in Scotland, according to The Herald.

Sports has always played an important role in the life of Kluft, who grew up in a very active household. According to the official Olympics website, her father was a professional footballer and her mother a long jumper.

During her career, Kluft was a popular athlete with sports brands and took part in Reebok's 'Run Easy' campaign in 2007 together with former football star Thierry Henry and former middle distance runner Stephen Cram.

However, it was not all sports in Kluft's life, who studied Peace and Development at Linnaeus University and "was appointed an honorary doctor of medicine at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg" in 2021, per that same university.

Kluft rose to the top of athletics and left her mark on academic life, but she always did so with a smile on her face. "It is not the outcome that is most important to me; I will finish my career with a smile no matter what, unless there is a bloody injury which forces me to do otherwise," she once told European Athletics.

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