Patrizia van der Weken at the 2024 World Indoor Championships in Glasgow (© AFP / Getty Images)
Patrizia van der Weken describes 2024 as a year of “firsts” and she made the most of every moment.
Now, with the European Indoor Championships and the World Indoor Championships both taking place within the next three weeks, the Luxembourgish sprinter is ready to build on those breakthroughs and make even more history for her nation.
The 25-year-old reached her first world indoor final in Glasgow last year, her seventh-place finish in the 60m being the best placing ever achieved by an athlete from her country in the history of the World Indoor Championships.
She then became Luxembourg’s first women’s track event finalist at a European Athletics Championships and finished fourth in the 100m in Rome, her time of 11.04 just 0.01 off the silver and bronze medal-winning marks. In the semifinals she improved her national record to 11.00.
The Meeting de Paris one month later was her Wanda Diamond League debut and she won the 100m, clocking 11.06 into a significant headwind to beat a field featuring multiple major medallists.
And then she returned to Paris to compete at her first Olympic Games, finishing fourth in her semifinal and receiving the honour of being her nation’s flag bearer at the closing ceremony.
“I had so many ‘first ever’ moments,” she smiles. “It was amazing, and I hope that I can continue doing the same thing.”
She has certainly picked up from where she left off. After a short break, Van der Weken was more motivated than ever to get back to action and following training stints in Tenerife, South Africa and her base in Luxembourg, she ran another national record in just her second competition of 2025. She maintained her fine form and that consistency was rewarded at the final meeting of the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold season in Madrid at the end of last month. Adding a win in the Spanish capital to her victories in Ostrava and Karlsruhe, she was crowned the overall 60m tour champion.
Patrizia van der Weken wins the 60m at the World Indoor Tour Gold meeting in Madrid (© Sergio Mateo)
Next up is the European Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn, held from 6-9 March, where she will look to build on that fourth-place finish in Rome and improve on her performance at the 2023 edition of the indoor competition in Istanbul, where she reached the 60m semifinals.
“I didn’t take a huge break after last year. I didn’t feel the need to switch off for too long,” explains Van der Weken, who is coached by French former decathlete Arnaud Starck. “I had an off-season for about three weeks and then we continued where we left off. I felt really good really soon when I got back into training and everything felt quite natural. So, I was excited to come out and do well indoors, especially with Europeans coming up as I was a bit disappointed with how Europeans went two years ago.”
Reflecting on finishing fourth in Rome, she adds: “I was pretty gutted to miss out (on a medal). It was one hundredth of a second, so that was bittersweet. But I did 11.00 in the semifinals so it was still a really good competition. We shall see how things evolve from here.”
Her progress has been impressive so far.
“In Luxembourg, it’s not very common to have a career in sports,” says Van der Weken, who relishes the opportunity to be a role model. Last year she was voted sportswoman of the year in Luxembourg, a nation with a population of less than 680,000.
“More and more athletes are doing it in several sports, but it’s not common. I really like that I can show society and younger athletes that it is possible to live off a professional career in sports. I hope that I can contribute to some kind of movement or evolution, to help the Luxembourgish sports industry to evolve.
“When I was younger, I just felt like I didn’t want to do the same thing that everyone else was doing,” adds the double 2018 world U20 semifinalist, who started working with Starck – Luxembourg’s 2024 coach of the year – when she was 14. “I decided with my coach that we wanted to give it a shot and it seems to be working out not too bad!”
Patrizia van der Weken in action at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (© AFP / Getty Images)
Van der Weken began her journey in athletics because her parents knew people from the local club. “I think they just sent me there to get rid of my energy,” she laughs.
Now they travel to watch her race whenever they can and after supporting her at the European Championships in Rome and the Olympics in Paris, Van der Weken is hopeful that she might still be able to get some tickets so her parents can join her in Apeldoorn.
On her aims for the rest of the season, she adds: “I think I can be really confident in my abilities, especially at the European Indoor Championships. I have goals in mind and I just want to go there and do my best. I think it’s a really close competition so anything can happen. It’s exciting and I am looking forward to meeting all those fast ladies again.”
The best in Europe are also among the best in the world and that’s an exciting prospect for Van der Weken, who will race at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing less than two weeks later.
“At World Indoors, if everyone is doing the competition then it could be a European podium, which is crazy to think about,” adds Van der Weken, who sits fourth on this season’s world 60m top list with her PB of 7.07 and could line up alongside the likes of Switzerland’s 2022 world indoor champion Mujinga Kambundji, Poland’s world indoor silver medallist Ewa Swoboda and Italy’s world indoor bronze medallist Zaynab Dosso at both championships.
The global event also gives her the opportunity to return to China for the first time since becoming the World University Games 100m champion in Chengdu in 2023.
“I am really looking forward to both indoor competitions and hope that I can do better than last time. For World Indoors, I was seventh, so that’s already really decent and I was pleased with that. We shall see how I can do in a couple of weeks.
“My team and I are preparing to travel there, with jet lag protocol and everything. I am excited that I get another chance at having a championship and gaining some experience, trying to build up for the future.”
A future that could contain a fair few more firsts – both for Van der Weken and her country.
Jess Whittington for World Athletics
