It is Sunday, February 19, when Bram Peters has trouble concentrating on his task. As assistant national coach of the Dutch 400-meter runners, it is his responsibility to stand at the finish line and film the race so that it can be analyzed later. He is ready at the line in the hall in Apeldoorn, when the final of the 400 meters at the NK indoor is about to start.
After 350 meters Peters sees the timekeeping of the race in which Femke Bol is well ahead. “Then I realized: this is going to be a very fast time. From that moment on I was doing two things at the same time. I was really busy with the clock.”
Bol runs a world record: 49.26, more than three tenths faster than the time set by the Czechoslovakian Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1982. The audience erupts in cheers, photographers dive on top of Bol, and national coach Laurent Meuwly screams in the stands. In the meantime, Peters is doing his best to keep filming: “I tried to keep my camera still, because there were still athletes that I also had to analyze afterwards. Then it took me fifteen minutes to realize what had happened.”
Two weeks later, during the team presentation of the Dutch athletics selection for the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul – which started this Thursday – Peters says that he has now had time to analyze Bol’s race. “Where she makes the difference is between 200 and 300 meters. There she takes four tenths compared to previous competitions. And that while that is the most difficult part of the entire race.”
Don’t fly out of the corner
A 400 meter indoor is completely different from a 400 meter outdoor, says Peters. Not only because of (the lack of) the weather conditions, but even more because of the track. Indoor competitions are held on 200m circuits, so the athletes have to go around twice. Peters: “And that requires a completely different way of walking.”
The crux is in the corners, which are much ‘tighter’ indoors than outdoors. Athletes cannot go through it at the same speed. “I really have the feeling that I have to make sure that I don’t go out of control,” says Lieke Klaver, who clocked 50.34 behind Bol at the Dutch Championships, the thirteenth time ever run. “You go into the corner with such a rotten pace that you actually have to work very much against your own strength.”
In order to remain in their lane, which also slopes inwards, the athletes exert themselves core and hang them – unconsciously – inside.
It’s why the race favorites prefer to start in the outside lanes; there the corners are the least tight and they can develop the highest speed. Bol and Klaver ran in lanes six and five during the record race. After the first lap of 200 meters they had to leave their lane and dive into the inside corner. That makes the point between 200 and 300 meters so difficult, says Peters. “You have the highest speed and you have to go through the tightest corner. Many athletes lose quite a lot of speed there, and after 300 meters it is difficult to restart.”
In order to keep running as fast as possible, the athletes have to increase their rhythm in the corners. “Ticking”, Tony van Diepen calls it. He won silver with the Netherlands in the 4×400 meters (outdoor) at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. “You kind of get squeezed into that corner, so your stride gets smaller. That is why you have to make more frequency.” It makes an indoor race more palatable for lightweights with substance, such as Bol and Van Diepen, than for the bigger athletes who rely on their speed, he says. “With slower, more aggressive passes you have more trouble in that corner. It explains why I can compete in the 400 meters indoors, but have no chance outdoors.”
What also helps is to cut the corner properly. Bol did that almost perfectly, says Peters. Consciously, Bol says a little later: “I entered that corner a little later, I almost went from track 6 to track 1 at ease. It is an advantage that we often train there, we know the corners well.”
Tempo changes
Thanks to her high rhythm and entering the corner at the right angle, Bol was able to “keep going like crazy” between 200 and 300 meters. She took that speed to the last 100 meters, which automatically made it faster.
Peters, who also ran 400 meters as an athlete himself, tells how tough that is. “You really have to play with your rhythm. On the straights you make long strides as if you were walking outside, in the corners your stride length has to be shorter and the rhythm up. It’s tempo changes all the time.” In his opinion, that makes the 400 meters indoor heavier than the 400 meters outdoor – an explanation why faster times are run outside.
Outdoor competitions are also highly regarded. Peters suspects that it has to do with the athletes from the United States and the Caribbean. “The greatest athletes in the 400 meters come from there. It is warm all year round, so they don’t even know indoors. Why would they? Indoor athletics is simply practiced much less.”
It does not make the world record less beautiful for Bol, she says, “because the record had been standing for a long time and very strong”. She is, for now, faster in the 400 meters indoors than outdoors; the Dutch record she ran last year at the European Outdoor Championships in Munich is 49.44. Coach Peters thinks that Bol should be able to run 48.5 on a 400-meter track in this form.
Although she now holds a world indoor record, Bol also thinks outdoor competitions are more important. For her great love and specialty, the 400 meter hurdles, the indoor turns are too tight and the lap is too short.