Femke Bol breaks 41-year-old track and field record photo/CNN
Dutch sprinter Femke Bol broke one of the oldest records in track and field as she set a new world-best time of 49.26 seconds in the indoor 400 meters at the weekend.
Bol, running in front of a home crowd at the Dutch Indoor Championships, beat Jarmila Kratochvílová’s world record of 49.59 seconds set in 1982.
After making a strong start hitting 23.63 at the 200 meter mark the Dutch sprinter closed out the record to a deafening noise in Apeldoorn.
“It was because of all the fans here that I ran this record,” said the 22-year-old Olympic 400m hurdles bronze medalist.
Kratochvílová’s old mark was the longest-standing world record in track races and the second-oldest record in track and field which was only eclipsed by Helena Fibingerová’s world record in the indoor shot put set in 1977.
Having won 400m hurdle bronze in Tokyo and silver at the world championships last year, she set a world-best 300m hurdle mark last year and ran a world indoor best 500m earlier this year, neither of which are on the world championships program.
Bol is the third-fastest woman in history in the 400m hurdle, only behind Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Dalilah Muhammad, both of whom finished ahead of Bol in Tokyo.
The outdoor 400m world record is 47.60 and was set by German Marita Koch in 1985.
Writing by Tersoo Nicholas