Femke Bol gets her first World record over the 500 meters at the 2023 New Balance Indoor Grand Prix

This is our update on the opening performance of the 2023 NB Indoor GP, with Femke Bol’s run over 500 meters. Femke opened the meet with a bang, and a new World record, breaking a seventeen-year-old record!  We’ve added quotes from Femke, thanks to the team at the media zone (Sandra Nel Kurman and Michelle Sammet). 

Updated February 9, 2023, with Femke Bol quotes 

Femke Bol gets her first World Record!

The 500 meters is a tough distance. For the 200 to the 400-meter specialist, it is insanely long for their focus. For the 800-meter specialist, is so damn fast!

Femke Bol is a 400m flat/ 400m hurdle specialist. In 2021, Femke took the Olympic bronze behind Sydney McLaughlin’s gold and Dalilah Muhammed’s silver in the 400-meter hurdles.

In 2022, Femke Bol took the silver at the indoor 400 meters to Shaunae Miller Uibo and anchored her 4x400m team to the silver at the World Indoors in Belgrade. At the World outdoors, Femke Bol took silver in the 400-meter hurdles and anchored a blistering 400m to nearly take the gold from the Dominican Republic in the Mixed 4×400 meters. But it was in August 2022, in her third championship of the year, that Femke Bol showed her true fitness. First, she won the 400m flat, then, she won her specialty, the 400m hurdles, and finally, her anchor of the 4×400 meters gave her three golds in the 2022 European Athletics Outdoor championships.

I spoke with Femke Bol at the NB Presser on Friday, February 3. I thought one of her answers was quite telling. When emcee Geoff Wightman asked Femke Bol if she knew the splits that she needed for the 500m world record, she said, with a smile, a curt, “Yes.” It was not lost on the media assembled that Femke did not share those splits.

After the presser, Femke Bol was kind enough to give me five minutes for a video interview. I asked her about 2022, her focus in 2023, and what she wanted to do in the 500 meters. Femke Bol answered, with a smile, “Run a respectable race.”

In the 500…