Pearl in the crown of the ‘Project 400’, there can only be one. Eveline Saalberg, Lieke Klaver, Lisanne de Witte had put the Dutch team in a good starting position on Saturday evening for a medal in the final of the 4×400 meter relay at the European Athletics Championships in Munich. But to win, something extra was needed. Femke Bol.
The 22-year-old athlete kept technically perfect until the last meter. The Netherlands won in a national record of 3.20.87, ahead of Poland, second at the Games last year. The relay victory, an award for the ‘Project 400’ that the Athletics Union started three and a half years ago, meant the third gold European Championship medal for Bol. She previously won the 400 meters and 400 meters hurdles
A Dutch athlete who wins gold three times at a European Championship, then the comparison with Fanny Blankers-Koen is never far away. At the 1950 European Championships in Brussels, she won gold medals in the 100 and 200 meters plus the 80 meter hurdles. After her, there were three European Championship golds for the Polish Irena Szewinska (1966), the GDR sprinters Petra Kandarr (1969) and Katrin Krabbe (1990), the Frenchman Christophe Lemaitre (2010) and the British Dina Asher-Smith (2018 ).
A gold combination of 400 and 400 hurdles was won at international championships for Harry Hillman (1904 Olympics) and Debbie Flintoff-King (1986 Commonwealth Games).
Olympic gold
Whether Bol will become the Blankers-Koen of the 21st century was already a question in the run-up to the European Championship. She wisely held off the boat herself. Three times European Championship gold in a post-Olympic year is not even four times Olympic gold, like Blankers-Koen in London 1948. In Munich, the Bol program was a perfect fit. No series, like at the Games, but ‘only’ semi-finals and finals four days in a row. In the relay she was then able to skip the series to peak mercilessly in the final one more time.
What will she bet on on her way to Paris 2024? Bol makes a lot of progress in the 400 meters. With Munich’s 49.44 she would have finished second at the World Cup a few weeks ago, and third at the Games last year. But can she come close to the 48.36 that Shaunea Miller-Uibo won in Tokyo? And in the 400 hurdles, her favorite part, Bol saw again that Sydney McLaughlin was in a class of its own at the World Cup. Her European success is no guarantee for Olympic gold, Bol also knows. But it was beautiful.