Femke Bol on her way to winning the 400m in Hengelo (© Dan Vernon)
Dutch hurdles star Femke Bol and the discus duo of Matthew Denny and Kristjan Ceh are among the multiple global medallists who will be looking to build on their strong starts to the season at the FBK Games – a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting – in Hengelo on Monday (9).
Two weeks on from achieving her fastest ever 400m hurdles season opener at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Rabat, Bol will want to maintain the momentum when she returns to race on home soil.
The world 400m hurdles champion won the 400m flat in a meeting record of 50.02 in Hengelo last year but contests her specialist event on Monday. It will be her first race since that 52.46 season opener in Rabat, where she used a new technique out of the blocks, and she heads to Hengelo from a training camp in Morocco with fellow Dutch athletes Nadine Visser and Lieke Klaver.
“Hengelo is one of the most special competitions out there, and on top of that, I’ll be running my specialty, the 400m hurdles,” said Bol, who restricted her indoor season to just two 4x400m races, at the European Indoor Championships. “That was a good decision,” she added. “I’ve built a strong foundation, I’m mentally refreshed, and I’m hungrier than ever.”
In Hengelo, she will line up alongside her fellow European medallists Louise Maraval and Cathelijn Peeters, as well as Great Britain’s Lina Nielsen and USA’s Cassandra Tate.
Fresh from their training camp in Morocco, Visser and Klaver will also join Bol in Hengelo – Visser in the 100m hurdles and Klaver in the 200m. Visser, who clocked 12.67 to finish second in Rabat, faces South Africa’s Marione Fourie, who set her national record of 12.49 in Hengelo last year, plus Pia Skrzyszowska and Celeste Mucci.
Klaver, the 2024 world indoor 400m silver medallist, drops down in distance to test herself in the 200m, as does Natalia Bukowiecka, Poland’s Olympic and world 400m medallist. They take on 200m specialist Anavia Battle and world U20 silver medallist Torrie Lewis.
The men’s discus contest kicks off the main programme and features a clash of titans. Australia’s Olympic bronze medallist Denny threw an Oceanian record of 74.78m in Ramona in April, a mark that places him second on the world all-time list, while Slovenia’s 2022 world champion Ceh surpassed 72 metres in three competitions within eight days at the end of last month, improving his national record to 72.36m – a mark that makes him No.6 all time. Now they go head-to-head in Hengelo.
The last time they clashed was at the Diamond League meeting in Doha, where Denny won and Ceh was third, but this time they will also have Jamaica’s Roje Stona to contend with as the Olympic champion makes his season debut. The field is further strengthened by Stona’s compatriot Fedrick Dacres, USA’s Sam Mattis and Great Britain’s Lawrence Okoye.
Another rivalry will be renewed in the women’s shot put. USA’s Chase Jackson and home star Jessica Schilder are separated by just seven centimetres as they lead this season’s world top list with respective throws of 20.54m to win in Shaoxing/Keqiao and 20.47m to win in Xiamen – both athletes filling the top two spots on both occasions.
Now they clash again, in a field that also features Maggie Ewen, Danniel Thomas-Dodd and Fanny Roos.
Australia’s two-time world indoor champion Nicola Olyslagers heads the high jump field, while Liam Adcock and Carey McLeod, who have both soared 8.33m this season, go head-to-head in the long jump. Three athletes who have soared over six metres clash in the pole vault as Ernest John Obiena and Chris Nilsen – both two-time world medallists – go up against KC Lightfoot.
Cordell Tinch, who moved to equal fourth on the world 110m hurdles all-time list when he clocked 12.87 to win in Shaoxing/Keqiao, goes up against his US compatriot Daniel Roberts, the Olympic silver medallist, plus Jamaica’s 2016 Olympic and 2017 world gold medallist Omar McLeod.
The women’s 3000m steeplechase also features a global champion in Uganda’s Peruth Chemutai – the Tokyo Olympic gold medallist who secured Olympic silver in Paris. She stars in a field also featuring Kazakhstan’s Daisy Jepkemei, who claimed 10,000m gold and steeplechase bronze at the Asian Championships at the end of last month.
Ten members of the women’s 800m field have PBs under two minutes and Anaïs Bourgoin of France leads the way so far this season with the PB of 1:57.81 she set to finish fourth in Rabat. She races Botswana’s Oratile Nowe, who won at the Continental Tour Gold meeting in Gaborone and was second in Nairobi, plus USA’s Sage Hurta-Klecker and Australians Abbey Caldwell, Catriona Bisset and Claudia Hollingsworth.
Dutch Olympic 1500m finalist Niels Laros, who ran a world U20 record to win the 1000m in Hengelo last year, drops down in distance again to test himself in an 800m starring European medallists Catalin Tecuceanu and Mark English.
Ronnie Baker opens his season in a 100m that pits him against Yohan Blake and Benjamin Richardson, while Dutch athletes will be looking to make an impact in the 400m as Liemarvin Bonevacia, Eugene Omalla and Jonas Phijffers go up against Botswana’s Busang Kebinatshipi and Brazil’s Matheus Lima.
