Five things to know about 400m hurdles star Femke Bol

What a 12 months it’s been for Femke Bol. The Dutch speedster has propelled herself into the athletics elite with silver at the World Athletics Championships followed by triple gold in August’s European Athletics Championships in Munich.

2023 started in much the same fashion, as Bol smashed the indoor 400m world record with a stunning run of 49.26 seconds at the Dutch Nationals.

Still only 23 and with the majority of her athletics career in front of her, the 1.84m athlete from Amersfoot, Netherlands has proven herself to be as adept over the one-lap hurdles as she is the 400m flat.

In July, she finished behind only Sydney McLaughlin in a world record final at the Worlds in Oregon, and ahead of the former world record holder and Rio 2016 Olympic Champion Dalilah Muhammad.

It followed a year in which she won bronze at Tokyo 2020 in a European record of 52.03 making her the third-fastest female 400m hurdler of all time.

Find out everything you need to know about Femke Bol below.

1 - She’s a triple threat on the athletics track

One thing that has really made Bol stand out this season is her versatility on an athletics track. After picking up silver at the World Athletics Championships, Bol, who is nicknamed bambi for the way she gracefully navigates the hurdles, travelled to Germany for the European Championships.

Having decided to race both the 400m hurdles and 400m flat in Munich - a moved she termed “double trouble” in an Instagram post, Bol stunned the world with victory in both to become the first-ever woman to do the 400m/400m hurdles double at a major championships.

But she wasn’t done there. Bol ended the meet by running a victorious anchor leg in the 4x400m relay to make it three golds in one championships.

2 - She’s a world, European and national record holder

When Bol isn’t standing on podiums at major championships, she’s busy breaking records.

On 31 May 2022 at the Ostrava Golden Spike meet, she won the non-Olympic 300m hurdles race in a new world record time of 36.86 seconds. Not only did it make her the first woman ever to run under 37 seconds over the distance, it also slashed a full 1.3 seconds off the previous record.

“I was crazy surprised. I was really hoping to run 37 seconds here and I hit two hurdles a bit,” Bol, who was competing in her first hurdles race in nine months, told European Athletics after the race. “Then I saw the time and it explains why I have so much lactic!”

Then in February 2023, she added the indoor 400m world record to her collection when she beat the 41-year-old mark of Jarmila Kratochvilova at the Dutch National, setting a new world's best of 49.26 seconds. And all this from an athlete who is first-and-foremost considered a hurdler!

In 2021 in Tokyo, her time in the 400m hurdles final (52.03) was the fastest-ever by a European woman over the distance. And not content with that, Bol’s 400m flat mark of 49.44 in the final of the European Athletics Championships was a national record.

3 - Before athletics, she practised judo

For an athlete with such a fluid running style, Bol’s introduction to sport was perhaps less graceful than expected.

Before stepping onto an athletics track, the Dutch record breaker practised another Olympic sport: judo.

However, the initial results were somewhat less than stellar.

“I broke my arm twice when I was really young,” Bol told Athletics Weekly about her initial forays into the Japanese sport. “And then my doctor said that I should do that, because I needed to learn how to fall.

“So then I did it for one year, and then I stopped because I didn’t really like it and I wanted to go to track & field but I was too young at first.

“I was really bad!”

Judo's loss is definitely athletics' gain.

4 - She embraces the pain

It’s quite common to hear athletes talk about the dread that the 400m instils in them as one of the most gruelling and demanding distances in athletics.

Not so with Bol. The Olympic medallist is an anomaly when it comes to the types of sessions she enjoys on a running track, stating that her favourites are the pain-inducing lactic sessions many runners so often shirk from.

“I have my sessions that I love more and I love less, but I really enjoy every session and mostly the lactic sessions because you really clear your mind,” she said.

“The only thing you can think about is the pain and how you want to recover.”

In fact, for Bol, it’s all part of the fun in a sport where the challenge means everything.

“You can think that you can’t and then you can again,” she said. “It’s really nice when you see yourself that mentally and physically you break those limits for yourself and go to a higher level and then also see that in my results - that’s amazing.”

5 - She has an unconventional way of celebrating her victories

When the day’s racing ends, there’s one thing Bol likes more than anything else to celebrate her exertions.

A Kinder Bueno.

Along with training partner Lieke Klaver, a post-race sampling of the chocolate treat has become something of a tradition.

And it’s not just for when things go well.

“We bring it to competitions now - then we know we can eat the Buenos after the race,” she told Atletiekunie’s YouTube channel in 2020. “We even talk about it before the competition.

“It’s become a bit of a habit. If the race was bad we use it to eat away the disappointment. When the race went well, we use it to celebrate.”

Bonus track - Bol's three favourite athletes

In a recent interview with the International Olympic Committee, Bol named her three favourite athletes of all time. 

Surprisingly only one was from the world of track & field. 

After first stating that fellow Dutch athlete and London 2012 Olympic horizontal bar gold medallist Epke Zonderland was a personal fave, Bol turned her attention to the world of swimming and 23-time Olympic gold medallist Michael Phelps. 

But when it came to track & field, one man stood above the rest for Bol - Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt. 

With such similar names and reputations for speeding around an athletics track, don't be surprised if bambi receives a new nickname in the future: 

Lightning Bol