Femke Bol shattered her European 400m hurdles record at the Resisprint meeting in La-Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland on Sunday (14) afternoon, becoming just the second athlete in history to break the 51 second-barrier.
- Full results here
- Watch again
Bol recorded the third fastest time in history with a 50.95 clocking to slash exactly half-a-second off her previous European record of 51.45 which she set in London last summer.
Only Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has ever run faster with her world record performances of 50.68 and 50.65 respectively. The pair are set to cross paths for the first time in over two years at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games next month.
Ahead of the Olympic Games, Bol will return to the British capital for the London Diamond League - the venue of her European record last year - next Saturday which will be her last 400m hurdles race before Paris 2024 where she will endeavour to improve on her bronze medal from Tokyo, the first senior medal of her career.
Bol, who was crowned 2022 and 2023 women's European Athlete of the Year, now holds three of the 10 fastest times in 400m hurdles history and an incredible 13 of the 15 fastest times in Europe in history.
Astonishingly, Bol's winning time of 50.95 also equals the Olympic qualifying standard for the 400m flat.
Bol's teammate Nadine Visser also broke new territory in a world class 100m hurdles final, smashing her Dutch record with 12.36 for victory ahead of Poland's Pia Skrzyszowska who also achieved a lifetime best of 12.37, just 0.01 shy of the Polish record which has stood to Grazyna Rabsztyn since 1980 and was a world record when it was set.
Visser and Skrzyszowska move to equal fifth and seventh respectively on the European all-time list.
There was also a breakthrough performance in the women's 400m for Norway's Henriette Jaeger who broke the 50 second-barrier for the first time with 49.85 to finish second behind Bahrain's 2019 world champion Salwa Eid Naser in 49.66.
Other highlights included Mujinga Kambundji winning the 100m on home soil in 10.90, just 0.01 shy of her Swiss record; France's Ryan Zeze winning the 200m in a lifetime best of 19.90; and Simon Ehammer reaching out to 8.36m in the last round of the long jump.