Femke Bol was born on 23 February 2000 in Amersfoort, Netherlands.[8][9] She has an older brother.[10] As a child, Bol practised judo for a year after she had broken her arm twice and her doctor had recommended the sport to help her learn how to fall.[11]
Around 2008, she started practising athletics at a local club, following her brother who was already a member there.[10][12] In an interview, Bol said about the sport: "It was always a way to clear your mind and just have fun and not think too much about other things. That's still what I like so much about it."[13] In 2014, she transferred to another local club, AV Altis, where her coach discovered her talent for longer sprints.[14]
Bol focused on the 400 metres distance in 2015, at age 15, and started winning Dutch age-group competitions.[5] She won five national youth titles in the 400 m (outdoor and indoor) between 2015 and 2017, and four junior titles in 2018 and 2019 (400 m outdoor, indoor, and hurdles).[8] In 2016, she started training with coach Bram Peters at the athletics track of Ciko'66 in Arnhem, where her parents drove her almost daily.[5]
At the international competitions, she progressed steadily. Competing against athletes up to two years her senior, Bol did not advance from the 400 m heats at the 2015 European Youth Olympic Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia. Two years later, the 17-year-old participated in the European Under-20 Championships held in Grosseto, Italy and reached the semi-finals of the event.[8]
In 2019, her last year as a junior competitor, she claimed her first national title (indoor 400 m) in a senior competition.[8] In June, in the third hurdles race of her life, Bol broke Dutch U20/U23 records and achieved World Championship qualifying standard when winning a meet in Geneva with a time of 55.94 s.[16][17] In July, she won a gold medal in the 400 m hurdles at the European U20 Championships in Borås, Sweden.[8] In September, she ran her first professional race at the Galà dei Castelli in Bellinzona, Switzerland.[3] In October, at the Doha World Championships in Qatar, the 19-year-old reached the semi-finals with a new personal best of 55.32 s in the heats of the 400 m hurdles, becoming the second-fastest European U20 woman in history.[18][19] She also helped her national women's team place seventh in the 4 × 400 m relay.[8]
Since November 2019, she has been training at the Dutch National Sports Centre Papendal near Arnhem, coached by Switzerland's Laurent Meuwly and her previous coach Bram Peters as assistant coach.[5]
Senior career
2020: First senior Dutch record and first senior successes
Bol set her first senior Dutch record on 18 July 2020 in Papendal.
Bol was forced to train on gravel paths in the woods and on grass fields when COVID-19 quarantine measures were first enacted in March 2020. Despite this, she raced in Papendal in July and broke by almost a second the national 400 m hurdles record of 54.62 s set by Ester Goossens in 1998.[20] First, running in the rain, she took almost a second off her 2019 best with a time of 54.47 s, which could not be ratified as only one other athlete competed. Two weeks later, she achieved 53.79 s, the fourth-fastest European under-23 time in history.[21]
During this pandemic season, the Dutchwoman won all her following races over the barriers: two Diamond League events staged in 2020 as one-off exhibition competitions, and three Continental Tour events. First she stayed ahead of all her competitors in Székesfehérvár, Hungary on 19 August, to repeat this achievement four days later at the Stockholm Bauhaus-galan winning her first Diamond race.[8] In September, she won in Ostrava (300 m hurdles), Bellinzona, and Rome. She reduced her open 400 metres pre-2020 best by 1.85 s down to 51.13 s.[8]
2021: Tokyo Olympic bronze medallist
Bol started her unbeaten indoor campaign on 30 January, beating her previous best in the 400 metres by more than 1.5 s to break a Dutch record in a time of 50.96 s at the Vienna Indoor Track & Field meet in Austria. The previous record was set a few minutes earlier by Lieke Klaver, who in turn broke Ester Goossens' mark which had stood at 51.82 s since 1998.[22] Bol then won all her following seven races at the distance in four events, improving in every final. Competing in the World Indoor Tour, she powered to meet records in Metz (50.81 s) and Toruń (50.66 s), then clocked 50.64 s at the Dutch Indoor Championships, and finally lowered her record to 50.63 s when winning at the European Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland.[23][24] She took there her second gold medal anchoring the women's 4 × 400 m relay to a championship record.[25][26] Her individual mark made her the fastest European woman since 2009.[27]
Bol during the 400 metres at the 2021 European Team Championships, where she won and set one of her eleven Dutch records from 2021.
The 21-year-old started the 2021 outdoor season by competing at the World Athletics Relays to set a 400 m national record of 50.56 s on 29 May at the IFAM meeting in Oordegem. She then started improving her own Dutch hurdling record when winning Diamond League meetings, beginning with a time of 53.44 s on 10 June in Florence. At the time it was also European U23 record, breaking a 37-year-old mark.[28] On 19 June, she returned to the 400 m flat event during the European Team Championships in Romania and bettered her record with a 50.37 s performance.[29] On 1 July in Oslo, she lowered her hurdles record in a time of 53.33 s. She then took almost a second off with a Diamond League record of 52.37 s on 4 July in Stockholm, where she beat Shamier Little by 0.02 s. This race was only the second in history, after the 2017 USATF Championships, in which three women recorded times below 53 seconds as third-placed Anna Ryzhykova finished in 52.96 s.[30] Bol, meanwhile, became the fourth fastest woman of all time with the sixth-fastest result ever, missing the European record by just 0.03 s.[31][32] On 6 July, she won the event at the Continental Tour meet in Székesfehérvár with a time of 52.81 s, edging out Little in 52.85 s again.[33] Having won the Diamond race in Gateshead, England on 13 July, she extended her unbeaten streak in her specialist event to 12 races in total. It was her third consecutive victory over Little, but this time Bol dominated, running away by about 10 metres.[34]
At the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics in July and August 2021, Bol ran six 400 m races with hurdles and flat, including three under 50 seconds relay legs. In the 400 m hurdles final, Bol finished third after Sydney McLaughlin (51.46 s – world record) and Dalilah Muhammad (51.58 s – inside previous world record).[35] With her time of 52.03 s, she broke the European record and became the third-fastest woman of all time at the event with the fourth-fastest result ever.[35][31][36] It was the first ever Olympic medal for the Netherlands at the event.[37] Before Bol's individual final on 4 August, she helped the mixed 4 × 400 m relay team set a national record in the final with her 49.74 s split, and later she anchored the women's 4 × 400 m relay to consecutive Dutch records in the heat and in the final, clocking splits of 49.14 s and 48.97 s respectively.[38] On 8 August, she reached a 400 metres hurdles ranking of No. 1 in the World Athletics Rankings for the first time.[39]
After the Games, in August and September, she continued her Diamond League dominance over the barriers, winning in Lausanne and the Zürich final with meet records of 53.05 s and 52.80 s respectively to claim her first Diamond trophy.[40][41] At the former, she finished clear ahead of Shamier Little and Dalilah Muhammad, while in Zürich Bol held off Little again.[42][43] Having skipped the USA's event in Eugene and ran 400 m flat in Paris (50.59 s, 4th),[8] she remained unbeaten in the Diamond race with six wins out of six races. While still in Switzerland, on 14 September, she ended her breakthrough season with another meet record in Bellinzona, staying unbeaten in 11 of her 12 hurdles races in 2021.[44]
2022: World indoor and outdoor silver medallist and triple European champion
Bol (second from the left) at the 2022 World Indoors in Belgrade, where she finished second in the 400 m.
Bol opened her indoor season returning to Metz, France, where she bested her previous meeting record in the 400 m (50.72 s), and also won her 200 metres heat with a new personal best (23.37 s). Then she returned to Toruń, Poland, to beat her local meet record again (50.64 s). On 27 February, at the Dutch Indoor Championships, she improved her own national record with a 50.30 s clocking which was also faster than her outdoor best, and putting her 12th on the world indoor all-time list.[56][57] At the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade about three weeks later, Bol won the silver medal, after she fell at the finish line during the semi-finals, in a time of 50.57 s behind Miller-Uibo who ran 50.31 s.[58] Bol also anchored the Dutch women's 4 × 400 m relay to silver thanks to her closing surge from fourth into second, with the fastest split of the race of 50.26 s.[59][60]
The 22-year-old started her outdoor season on 31 May at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava, where she ran a world best over the 300 m hurdles. She clocked a time of 36.86 s, which was 1.3 s faster than the previous best set by Zuzana Hejnová in 2013.[61] She continued with Diamond League wins in Rome, Oslo, and Stockholm, breaking a meet record in Oslo before posting 52.27 s in Stockholm to improve her own Diamond League record with 0.10 s which she set the previous year.[62][63][64]
At the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon in July, Bol first ran the final leg of the mixed 4 × 400 m relay. After taking the baton a distant third, she anchored the Dutch team to a silver and a national record thanks to her split of 48.95 s, the second-fastest female split of the entire race.[65] In the 400 m hurdles, she equalled her season's best (52.27 s) to finish behind McLaughlin (who lowered her world record to 50.68 s) and ahead of Muhammad in third (53.13 s).[66] The Dutch women's 4 × 400 m squad lost the baton in the heats and was disqualified despite a qualifying position. After the championships in August, she broke for the first time the 50-second barrier in the 400 m flat and set a national and meet record with a time of 49.75 s at the Silesia Diamond League.[67]
The same month, she completed the gold hat-trick at the European Championships in Munich, becoming the first female sprinter to complete a 400 m double at a major championships as she won one-lap events both with and without hurdles. Her time for the open 400 m of 49.44 s was the fastest at a Europeans since Stuttgart 1986 and a new national record, while over the barriers Bol set a championship record.[68][69] She rounded off her Munich campaign by producing a 48.52 s anchor leg to land the Netherlands gold and a national record in the 4 × 400 m relay, moving from third to first around the final bend; their result was also the fastest at a Europeans since 1986.[70] Bol became only the second Dutch athlete after Fanny Blankers-Koen in 1950 to win three gold medals at the event.[71]
In her return to the Diamond League, Bol set another meet record over the barriers in Lausanne, and then concluded her third senior season with a victory at the Zürich final, successfully defending her Diamond League title.[72] She achieved six marks under 53 seconds that year, staying unbeaten in 11 out of her 12 hurdles races, posted an individual win-loss record of 13–4, and was crowned European Female Athlete of the Year.[8][73][74]
2023: World indoor 400 m record and double world champion
On 19 February 2023, Bol set a world indoor 400 m record, breaking the longest-standing track world record.
On 4 February, Bol improved by nearly 0.7 s the indoor world best performance in the less frequently run distance of 500 metres with 1:05.63 min, also faster than the outdoor record (1:05.9 min), at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston, USA.[75] Competing again in Metz, France, she set new Dutch indoor records in both the 200 m and 400 m. Bol clocked a lifetime best in the former (22.87 s), and was the fourth woman in history to break the 50-second barrier with 49.96 s in the latter.[76] She next triumphed with a meet record in Liévin (50.20 s).[77]
On 19 February at the Dutch Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn, she sliced 0.7 s off her best with a landmark 49.26 s, breaking the longest-standing world record in a track race. This was at the time the 49.59 s indoor 400 m record, set by Jarmila Kratochvílová back in 1982.[78][79] After setting an outright lifetime best, Bol said, "this was almost a perfect race".[80]
Bol caps her 2023 indoor campaign with a 49.85 s run at Istanbul 2023. She broke the 50-second barrier a record three times that year.
She capped her record-breaking indoor campaign by successfully defending her European 400 m title at Istanbul 2023 with the third mark under 50 seconds in the that season (49.85 s), a global record. She added her seventh European title anchoring the Netherlands to a 4 × 400 m relay victory with a new Dutch and championship record, making them the third-fastest national women's team in history.[81][82]
Training for the 2023 outdoor season, Bol practiced a different stride pattern for the 400 m hurdles in an effort to become faster. Previously, she took fifteen steps between the hurdles throughout the race, which meant she could jump over each hurdle with the same leg leading. Now, she tried out fourteen steps between the first few hurdles, which made her alternate between her legs for the jump, only to change it to fifteen steps for the last hurdles.[83] Bol tried this new setup in competition for the first time in Oordegem, Belgium on 27 May, where she ran sixteen steps after hurdle seven instead of fifteen and nonetheless set a world lead of 53.12 s.[84] Bol continued to win three Diamond League races over hurdles in Rome, Oslo, and Lausanne, setting meet records in all three of them.[85][86][87]
On 23 July, Bol made her first ever appearance at the London Diamond League. After leading from the first barrier, Bol continued to widen her lead throughout the entire race. At the finish line, she stopped the clock at a time of 51.45 s, which was a 0.58 s improvement of her personal best in the 400 hurdles.[88] With her performance in London, Bol became the third woman in history to run the 400 metres hurdles under 52 seconds. Her time of 51.45 s was the third-fastest time ever and made her the second-fastest woman of all time, as only world record holder McLaughlin-Levrone had run faster. This time also further lowered her own European and Diamond League records.[89] On 25 July, she reached a women's overall ranking of No. 2 in the World Athletics Rankings for the first time, with only Faith Kipyegon ranking higher.[90]
After the world championships, Bol won her 400 metres hurdles races at the Galà dei Castelli in Bellinzona, Memorial Van Damme in Brussels, and Prefontaine Classic in Eugene,[8] setting meeting records on all three occasions and becoming the 2023 Diamond League champion in 51.98 s, her third time under 52 seconds of the season, on 17 September.[8][94] In 2023, Bol won all of her twenty individual 400 m flat and hurdles races[8] and became European Athlete of the Year for a second time.[95]
2024
On 3 February, Bol started her 2024 indoor season in Metz, where she ran 49.69 s in the 400 metres short track and set a Dutch indoor record of 22.64 s in the 200 metres short track, both meeting records.[96][97][98]
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