Femke Bol

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.

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.

Bol then won all her following seven races at the distance in four events, improving in every final.

Femke Bol (born 23 February 2000) is a Dutch track and field athlete who competes in hurdling and sprinting.

She specialises in the 400 metres hurdles, where she is the 2023 World Champion, and in the 400 metres, where she is the 2024 World Indoor Champion and the short track world record holder.

In the 4 × 400 metres relay, she is the 2023 World Champion and the 2024 World Indoor Champion with the Dutch women's team.

Bol holds the world record in the 400 metres short track with a time of 49.17 seconds set on 2 March 2024; the European record in the 400 metres hurdles with a time of 51.45 seconds, making her the second-fastest woman of all time in the event; and five Dutch records in individual events and relays.

She also has world best performances in the 300 metres hurdles and 500 metres short track.

She won two gold medals at the 2023 World Championships and two gold medals at the 2024 World Indoor Championships, was champion in the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Diamond League, and won a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

She is also a four-time silver medalist at the world championships (outdoor and indoor), a seven-time gold medalist at the European championships (outdoor and indoor), and a nine-time medalist (five gold) at the Dutch championships (outdoor and indoor).

Bol's highest World Athletics Rankings were No. 1 in the 400 metres hurdles in 2021–2024, No. 3 in the 400 metres in 2023 and 2024, and No. 2 of women overall in 2023.

She was European Athletics Rising Star of the Year in 2021 and European Athlete of the Year in 2022 and 2023.

Femke Bol was born on 23 February 2000 in Amersfoort, Netherlands.

She has an older brother.

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.

Around 2008, she started practising athletics at a local club, following her brother who was already a member there.

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."

In 2014, she transferred to another local club, AV Altis, where her coach discovered her talent for longer sprints.

Bol attended secondary school in Amersfoort, after which she became a student of communication sciences at Wageningen University.

As of 2023, she was in a relationship with the Belgian pole vaulter Ben Broeders.

Bol focused on the 400 metres distance in 2015, at age 15, and started winning Dutch age-group competitions.

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).

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.

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.

At the international competitions, she progressed steadily.

In 2019, her last year as a junior competitor, she claimed her first national title (indoor 400 m) in a senior competition.

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. In July, she won a gold medal in the 400 m hurdles at the European U20 Championships in Borås, Sweden.

In September, she ran her first professional race at the Galà dei Castelli in Bellinzona, Switzerland.

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.

She also helped her national women's team place seventh in the 4 × 400 m relay.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.