Bol joins Blankers-Koen in the Museum of World Athletics

The Museum of World Athletics (MOWA) is delighted to announce the addition to its collection of the bodysuit worn by the Netherlands’ Femke Bol when she smashed her own European 400m hurdles record on 14 July 2024.

Bol’s competition uniform will be on public display in the MOWA Heritage Exhibition Tokyo 2025 in the Japanese capital from the beginning of July and will permanently enter the museum’s digital platform in 3D later in 2025.

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said: “World Athletics warmly thanks Femke Bol for her kindness and generosity in donating to our museum the bodysuit which she wore when setting the European 400m hurdles record in La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland last year.

“Her 50.95 run there makes the garment donated to the Museum of World Athletics extra special. Femke is one of only two athletes to have gone under 51 seconds in history, and her personal best is only headed by three world records.

“We are delighted that Femke’s bodysuit joins the 1948 London Olympic memorabilia of an earlier flying Dutch woman, Fanny Blankers-Koen, which was donated by her daughter to the MOWA in 2018. We are honoured to have these two great champions and record-breakers from the Netherlands, both sprinters and hurdlers, represented in our heritage collection.”

World and Olympic champion and world record-holder Bol commented: “I am pleased that my bodysuit is being inducted into the Museum of World Athletics whose collection includes competition items from the first female Olympic champion at 400m hurdles Nawal El Moutawakel and multiple global champions Nezha Bidouane and Jana Pittman.

“I hope by donating my European record suit to the museum it will not only interest athletics fans, but might help inspire young girls to chase their own dreams in life.”

The dazzling Dutchwoman

Bol’s performance at the Resisprint International, a World Athletics Continental Tour Challenger meeting, in La Chaux-de-Fonds on 14 July last year was one of major significance. It took her through the 51 seconds barrier, her finishing time of 50.95 slicing a chunk of precisely half a second, 0.50, off the European record she had set in the London Diamond League meeting in 2023.

At the time, it was the third-fastest women’s 400m hurdles time in history, behind Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s 50.65 at the US Olympic Trials in Eugene the previous month and the US athlete’s previous world record of 50.68, which she set at her national championships in 2022, also at Hayward Field.

Bol subsequently moved to fourth on the global all-time list following the stunning 50.37 that McLaughlin-Levrone uncorked in the 2024 Olympic final in Paris, but the Dutch athlete’s barrier-breaking performance in the north-west of Switzerland was momentous.

La Chaux-de-Fonds was a suitable setting, given its status as a major watch-making centre in the Jura Mountains, 12 miles from Neuchatel, where Zola Budd plodged barefoot through the mud to her second world cross country title back in the mists of 1986.

In the modest setting of Stade de la Charriere, with its 2500-seater stand, Bol swiftly settled into her smooth, silky style. She pulled clear of Bahrain’s Kemi Adekoya down the back straight, flawlessly implementing the stride pattern she had been perfecting under the guidance of her Swiss coach Laurent Meuwly: 14 to hurdle seven, then 15 for the final three flights down the home straight.

As she crossed the line, 2.14 seconds clear of Asian record-holder and 2016 world indoor 400m champion Adekoya, Bol clasped her hands to her face when she saw the digits on the trackside clock.

Although accustomed to improving in leaps and bounds (her previous European records of 51.45 in London in 2023 and 52.03 in the Olympic final in Tokyo in 2021 having come in chunks of 0.58 and 1.24 seconds), the young woman from Amersfoort in the heart of the Netherlands was clearly not expecting such a huge step.

“I can’t believe it,” the near-breathless Bol confessed to the trackside interviewer. “I’m so happy. I felt so good.”

A month later, in the Olympic cauldron of Stade de France, Europe’s greatest ever one lap female hurdles exponent was left in an equally incredulous state, though far from happy.

In attempting to keep up with McLaughlin-Levrone’s searing pace in the first 300m of the Olympic final, Bol hit a metaphorical brick wall at the head of the home straight.

Engulfed by a tsunami of lactic acid, she faded to a second successive Olympic bronze, clocking 52.15, as her nemesis from New Jersey scorched to her breathtaking new world record figures of 50.37, with Anna Cockrell securing the runner-up spot for a US one-two.

“I screwed it up,” Bol lamented. “It was just a bad race.”

Still, while the seemingly untouchable McLaughlin-Levrone now boasts the three fastest times in history, the depth of Bol’s brilliance in the women’s 400m hurdles cannot be denied.

She owns 20 of the 50 quickest marks of all time; the Olympic champion and world record-holder is responsible for 12 of them.

At just-turned 25, Bol has already amassed a glittering array of major championship medals – not just as a 400m hurdler but also as the fastest indoor women’s 400m runner in history and as an anchor leg relay runner of near-superhuman powers.

Over the barriers in her specialist event, she happens to be the reigning world champion, gold in Budapest in 2023 having followed silver behind McLaughlin-Levrone in Oregon the year before. She also has European 400m hurdles golds from 2022 and 2024.

In the flat 400m, Bol is the world indoor champion and world indoor record-holder, having clocked 49.17 in claiming the title in Glasgow in March last year.

Her 49.26 at the 2023 Dutch Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn shattered the ancient 49.59 global mark set by Jarmila Kratochvilova of Czechia in 1982. She improved that to 49.24 at the 2024 Dutch Indoor Championships, a fortnight before her glorious Glasgow performance.

Bol claimed the European outdoor 400m crown in Munich in 2022 in 49.44, the fastest winning time since 1986, when Marita Koch, East Germany’s world record-holder in the one-lap event, clocked 48.22 in Stuttgart.

In securing an unprecedented 400m hurdles-400m flat double in Munich and uncorking a 48.52 anchor leg to take her country to victory in the women’s 4x400m relay, the formidable Femke emulated the historic deeds of the original Flying Dutchwoman, Fanny Blankers Koen, a three-time gold medal winner at the 1950 European Championships in Brussels.

With a baton in her hand, Bol has been a woman possessed in the last two global outdoor championships.

At the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23, after dramatically falling within sight of victory in the mixed event, she made up a deficit of 10 metres to snatch victory for the Netherlands in the final of the women’s 4x400m relay.

She was equally awesome in the mixed Olympic final in Paris last year, taking her country from fourth to first with a 47.93 anchor leg.

The trailblazing Bol might be confining herself to the relays at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn over the next three days, 6-9 March, but stand by for more deeds of devastation by the dazzling young Dutchwoman.

Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage