Femke Bol ran 52.51 seconds to win the FBK Games and set a meet record on home soil in the Netherlands yesterday. It’s her second race of the season, after winning at the Meeting International Mohammed VI d’Athlétisme de Rabat with a time of 52.46 seconds.
Bol has established herself as one of the top athletes in track and field since winning the 2023 World Athletics Championships and finishing second in 2022. But in the minds of many, her victory in 2023 comes with an asterisk.
To defend her title, Bol will have to get past Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, an obstacle she didn’t have to face in 2023, due to McLaughlin-Levrone withdrawing from the Championships with a knee injury.
Bol’s list of accolades in a relatively young career is undoubtedly impressive. She’s already the four-time Diamond League Final winner, winning every year dating back to 2021, and has won a Diamond League event in the long hurdles 23 times, dating back to 2020. Along with individual medals in the 400-meter hurdles, she also boasts two bronze medals in the event from the last two Olympics, as well as gold medals in the 4 x 400-meter relays from both the Olympics and World Championships.
But until she can beat her rival in a major championship, she’ll continue to live in McLaughlin-Levrone’s shadow. Bol has yet to win a head-to-head matchup against her rival.
Only Three Head-to-Head Match-ups
The honors section on McLaughlin-Levrone’s World Athletics page is surprisingly sparse in quantity compared to Bol’s. She rarely contests top circuit meetings outside of the United States, which is why she only has three Diamond League Golds to her name.
In a 2024 interview with Citius Magazine, her coach Bobby Kersee said, “For us, it’s a 14-hour or seven-hour time difference, language change and food change. It’s kind of difficult for us to go to Europe and base camp over there and then come back home and then make our American teams and stay healthy.”
Because of McLaughlin-Levrone’s proclivity for staying in America, she has surprisingly only raced Bol head-to-head three times.
Their first march-up came at the Olympics in 2021, where McLaughlin-Levrone walked away with her first Olympic Gold, running 51.46 seconds to Bol’s bronze medal-winning time of 52.03 seconds.
Their second match-up came in 2022, when Bol would have to settle for silver, running 52.27 seconds and watching McLaughlin-Levrone decisively pull ahead with a 50.68-second time.
Their most recent match-up came last summer when Bol faded on the corner, allowing Anna Cockrell to seize the silver medal in a race where McLaughlin-Levrone set a new World Record time of 50.37 seconds.
On her performance, Bol said in an interview with World Athletics, “All you want to do in an Olympic final is to put up your best race. I screwed it up. I’m not sure where I made the mistake. I just got so much lactic acid with 300 metres to go. I’m not sure why, I really have no explanation. This is just a bad race. I’ll look at the positives, I’ll talk to my coach, I’ll try to enjoy the bronze.”
Will the Fourth Match-up Come September?
Finishing anywhere other than the top of the podium in September’s World Championships in Tokyo will only solidify Bol’s legacy as the second-best long hurdler of her generation, and of all time.
Bol’s best of 50.95 seconds from last summer currently ranks second in history, and puts her within striking distance of the world record. However, even breaking the world record probably isn’t enough to silence critics and unanimously launch her into the top position all-time unless she also beats McLaughlin-Levrone at a championship meet.
The path won’t be easy for her, with her rival already running 52.07 seconds at Grand Slam Miami while spending much of her early training focusing on short speed.