20 February, 2023

Femke Bol: Record breaker

Photo: Wanda Diamond League

Reigning 400m hurdles Wanda Diamond League champion Femke Bol made headlines this week with a 400m indoor world record in Apeldoorn.

Dutch star Femke Bol continues to go from strength to strength after picking up her second successive Wanda Diamond League title last year.

Fresh from another dominant season in athletics' premier one-day series in 2022, the flying Dutchwoman already has a world record under her belt in 2023, having obliterated Jarmila Kratochvilova's previous best with 49.26 in Apeldoorn last weekend.

Self-effacing as ever, Bol described her record as "a bonus" as she prepares to defend her 400m hurdles Diamond Trophy and World Athletics Championships silver medal in 2023.

Yet the record should have come as no surprise for regular Bol-watchers. As well as claiming her first Diamond League victory in the 400m flat in Silesia last year, she has repeatedly proven her record-breaking pedigree in the 400m hurdles in recent years.

The outstanding performer in the women's 400m hurdles since she burst onto the Diamond League scene in 2020, Bol has broken the series record twice in the last two years, and smashed no fewer than three meeting records in another imperious title charge last season.

Both of those Diamond League records have come at the Bauhaus Galan in Stockholm, a meeting which Bol admitted was her favourite Diamond League destination.

Her 52.37 in the Swedish capital in 2021 was also a Dutch record, and she went one better in the same place last season, clocking 52.27 to claim her third of five wins on the way to the Diamond League title.

Stockholm was also where Bol picked up her first ever Diamond League win back in 2020, a victory which kickstarted a dominant few years for the now 22-year-old hurdler.

Since that first success, she has notched up a total of 14 victories on the Diamond League circuit, with no rival getting so much as a hair on her in either 2021 or 2022.

In fact, the only woman who has managed to outshine Bol in the 400m hurdles in the last few years is Olympic champion and world record holder Sydney McLaughlin, who has been streets ahead of all other competitiors in the 400m hurdles since she claimed her first and until now only Diamond League title in 2019.

Yet Bol, it seems, is now slowly closing the gap on her American rival, as she gathers a head of steam in both the hurdles and the flat ahead of this season. As she admitted after Apeldoorn, she thinks she can only get faster in 2023.

“I’ve been working on speed this winter and saw I was doing really well in speed training," she said. "I hope to go even faster.”