[3][4] As of 25 August 2016, he holds the French national records for the highest pole vault clearance both outdoors (6.05 m) and indoors (6.16 m).

Outside pole vaulting, Lavillenie is a keen motorcyclist, and raced in the 2013 Le Mans 24 Hours for motorcycles, finishing 25th.

[3] Lavillenie improved his outdoor personal best to 5.81 m in May 2009, beating veteran French pole vaulter Romain Mesnil in Forbach.

[7] He achieved another world-leading outdoor mark with a winning jump of 6.01 m on 21 June 2009 at the 2009 European Team Championships in Leiria, Portugal.

At the Adidas Grand Prix on 12 June 2010, he won the pole vault event with a jump of 5.85 m (which was a meeting record), beating Steven Hooker into second place.

Lavillenie underwent surgery on his left hand after he broke it due to a snapped pole accident in December 2011.

He was in the bronze medal position (5.85 m) behind two Germans at 5.91 m – Björn Otto and Raphael Holzdeppe – when he cleared the aforementioned height on his third and final attempt.

At the 2013 European Indoor Championships, Lavillenie won the pole vault title for the third time in a row after clearing 6.01 m in the final.

[13] At 27 July 2013 London Grand Prix fixture of the 2013 IAAF Diamond League, Lavillenie cleared 6.02 m to secure victory, setting a meeting record for the pole vault and beating his own French national outdoor pole vault record by 1 cm.

[16] Despite not winning the World Championship title, the flying Frenchman lost only one other outdoor competition all season and he won the IAAF Diamond League race for his event for the fourth consecutive time in 2013.

On 31 January 2014, Lavillenie cleared 6.08 m with some room to spare on his first attempt, at the Pedro's Cup indoors meeting in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

Competing in the annual Pole Vault Stars meeting in Sergey Bubka's hometown of Donetsk, Ukraine, Lavillenie entered the competition at 5.76 m and cleared that height as well as 5.91 m on his first attempts before needing all three tries to get over 6.01 m. With the bar set at 6.16 m and Bubka looking on from the stands, Lavillenie flew over the bar on his first try.

[18] It was Lavillenie's fourth consecutive win in the Pole Vault Stars meeting, and came one week short of 21 years since Bubka set the record of 6.15 m at that competition in 1993.

After a lengthy delay due to the official measurement of the world record 6.16 m, Lavillenie had the bar raised 5 cm to 6.21 m. On his first attempt, he could not control the pole after planting it in the box – the pole pushed him backwards and as he fell off the elevated runway the spikes of his right shoe lacerated the inside of his left ankle that was on the edge of the runway.

Lavillenie was given a hero's welcome when he landed home on 16 February, showing up in the Charles de Gaulle Airport terminal building in crutches before a horde of journalists.

[22] The new world record holder arrived home to an outpouring of praise from all quarters in a country where pole-vaulting is held in the highest esteem.

Lavillenie's compatriot, Jean Galfione, who won the 1996 Olympic pole vault gold medal, said, "Doing better than Bubka, it is like going faster than Usain Bolt, having better statistics than Michael Jordan.

Lavillenie returned to competition in the Drake Relays track and field meeting held in Des Moines, Iowa at the end of April, where he won the pole vault event with a jump of 5.70 m.[25] On 18 May, he won the pole vault event at the Shanghai leg of the 2014 Diamond League, clearing 5.92 m on the first attempt.

[26] Lavillenie was the favorite to win the Olympic gold in pole vaulting, but a strong performance from the host country's Thiago Braz da Silva left him with the silver medal.

[28] Lavillenie compared the incident to Jesse Owens being booed at the Olympics in 1936, although he later apologized for the comment, saying it was made in the heat of the moment and he deeply regretted it.