It is incredibly difficult to set a record in athletics, or indeed in any sporting event. Elsewhere on this site, you can read about the records that have stood for the longest, which gives you an insight into just how tricky it is to set a record in the first place, let alone to then break your own record.

Yet not only have some athletes done it, there are those that have done it more than once. This incremental increase in the record set by someone is a remarkable achievement, which is why we’re looking at it in more detail here.

It is worth noting, however, that this isn’t an exhaustive list.

Armand Duplantis

It isn’t a record that Armand Duplantis will have set his mind on achieving when he first got into athletics, but there is a solid argument that the fact that he has broken the pole vault world record 13 times might in itself be a record.

The pole vault world record had been held by Renaud Lavillenie, with the Frenchman setting a height of 6.16 metres in 2014. Six years later and Duplantis jumped 6.17 metres to take the record for himself at an athletics meet in Poland. In the years that have followed, he has gone on to increase his world record by one centimetre at a time.

You might well wonder why he has done that, but when you learn that athletes receive a bonus of around £74,000 each time they break a world record at specific World Athletics meetings, it makes much more sense. He set a new world record at the Hungarian Grand Prix when he jumped 6.29 metres, which was not only his 13th time of breaking his own record but his third new world record set in 2025.

He completed the 6.29 metre jump in spite of the fact that he had missed his first attempt at a much lower height of 6.11 metres and the rattling of the bar in his second attempt at the world record height.

Faith Kipyegon

Faith Chepngetich Kipyegon is a middle and long-distance runner who was born in Kenya on the tenth of January 1994. She set records and won medals as a junior runner before taking her success to the Olympics and other senior athletics meets, winning the 1,500 metres for the first time in 2014.

It was at the delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics 2020 that Kipyegon set the Olympic record in the 1,500 metres, defeating a record that had stood for 33 years when she finished with a time of 3:53.11. That also made her only the second woman in history to win back-to-back Olympic gold medals in the event.

Faith Kipyegon to receive Ksh10 million from the Sports Ministry for breaking the Women’s 1500m World Record pic.twitter.com/V7MmCjtFvy

— Kenyans.co.ke (@Kenyans) August 28, 2025

In the July of 2022, Kipyegon became the first female athlete to win four global titles over 1,500 metres when she broke her own record, completing the race in 3:52.96. A month later, Kipyegon came within 0.3 seconds of breaking the world record when she ran the second-fastest time in history, making it home in 3:50.37.

The following year, she ran the distance in 3:49.1, setting the world record for the first time. It was not a record that lasted for very long, given that Kipyegon then ran it in 3:40.04 a little over a year later, before running it in 3:48.68 in the July of 2025.

Usain Bolt

Whilst some might judge him for being a Manchester United supporter, the one thing that cannot be argued with is that Usain Bolt is the greatest sprinter of all time. The Jamaican followed in the footsteps of his compatriot, Asafa Powell, who broke the world record in the 100 metres four times.

In 2008, Bolt ran the race in 9.72 seconds to set a new record, then defeated that time by running it in 9.69 seconds. In 2009, he set the world record that remains in place today at the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin, running 100 metres in the mind-boggling time of 9.58 seconds.

As if that isn’t impressive enough, Bolt did the same thing in the 200 metres. He became the only sprinter to win the 100 metre and 200 metre gold medals at three successive Olympics, achieving it by winning the events in 2008, 2012 and 2016. In 2008, he set the world record in the 200 metres race when he ran it in 19.30 seconds, improving upon that by running it in 19.19 seconds a year later.

When you consider that he also helped Jamaica set the 4 x 100 metres relay world record three times, it is a sign of just how impressive he was as a runner and rightly called the fastest man on the planet.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone

In the 400-metre hurdles, there is arguably no one better than Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The American sprinter has set the world record in the event not once, not twice, not three times and not even four times, but five times during her career. She first did so in 2016, having qualified for the US Olympic track team as the youngest athlete since Denean Howard 36 years earlier.

The record she broke then was the world youth record, running it in 54.46 seconds. A year later, she ran it in 51.61 seconds, later being called ‘one of the most dominant high school athletes ever’ by Sports Illustrated.

Her world record time in the event was set in 2021, running it at the Olympic Trials in Oregon in a time of 51.90 seconds. She claimed Olympic Gold in Tokyo when she ran the event in 51.46 seconds, also winning Olympic gold in the 4 x 400 metres relay.

In the June of 2022, she once again broke her own world record when she ran the 400-metre hurdles in 51.41 seconds, then 50.68 seconds a month later. That record was broken again in 2024 when she finished in 50.37 seconds, then at the Diamond League, she ran the 400-metre hurdles in 49.11 seconds.