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Femke Bol after her record run
Photo: OLAF KRAAK / AFP
Femke Bol, the Olympic bronze medalist in the 400m hurdles, has broken the oldest world record in a track race and smashed a 41-year-old record in the women's 400m.
The 22-year-old ran 49.26 seconds at the Dutch Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn.
She broke the world record of 49.59 seconds set by the Czech Jarmila Kratochvílová in March 1982. Kratochvílová had set the best time at a meeting in Milan.
This was the longest standing world record in a track and field event scheduled for the Olympic Games or World Championships, whether indoors or outdoors.
Kratochvílová keeps the oldest world record – over a different distance
However, "the new oldest track record" is also held by Kratochvílová: It's her 800-meter outdoor world record of 1:53.28 from 1983. Since she set that 800-meter record, a woman has been nothing but once came within 96 hundredths of a second of this record.
However, her times are viewed critically, but she could never be proven to have committed a doping offense.
She herself had reported the regular administration of injections, but these only contained vitamins.
The only older world record in all athletics that goes back further than Kratochvílová's 800-meter time is Czech Helena Fibingerová's world indoor record in the shot put of 22.50 meters in 1977.
Bol holds two more records
At the beginning of the indoor season, Bol already ran a best time over 500 meters indoors (1:05.63 minutes).
She also set the fastest time in history in the 300-meter hurdles (36.86 seconds), which is also not part of the Olympic Games or World Championships.
In her favorite discipline, the 400 meter hurdles, Bol is the third fastest woman in history behind the Americans Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Dalilah Muhammad.
At last year's World Championships, she took silver in a race that McLaughlin-Levrone won in a world record time.
Bol was 1.59 seconds back.
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