A mouthwatering clash between Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships gold medallists Femke Bol of the Netherlands and Poland’s Natalia Bukowiecka looks set to be one of the highlights of next week’s European Athletics Team Championships 1st Division in Madrid, after final entries were confirmed.
Bol, who won in her specialist 400m hurdles event at Roma 2024, is taking on Bukowiecka (formerly Kaczmarczyk) in the flat 400m, the discipline in which the Pole struck gold and Olympic bronze last year.
It is of several intriguing contests within the team format, that will see Italy attempt to retain the title they won for the first time at Silesia 2023.
Italians name strong line up for title defence
Italian Roma 2024 gold medallists Marcell Jacobs (men’s 100m), Lorenzo Simonelli (110m hurdles), Yemaneberhan Crippa (5000m), Nadia Battocletti (5000m), Sara Fantini (women’s hammer), plus the men’s 4x100m team, including Filippo Tortu, Lorenzo Patta and Roberto Rigali – who won gold last summer – are all featured in a strong Italian line-up.
There are 16 individual gold medallists from Roma 2024, as well as the Italians, Bol and Bukowiecka, the entries also include Switzerland’s Timothe Mumenthaler (men’s 100m), Dominic Lobalu (men’s 5000m) and Angelica Moser (women’s pole vault), Greece’s Miltiadis Tentoglou (men’s long jump), Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh (women’s high jump), Germany’s Malaika Mihambo (women’s long jump), Spain’s Ana Peleteiro-Compaore (women’s triple jump) and the Netherlands’ Jessica Schilder (women’s shot put).
There are also three individual gold medallists from the Paris Olympics confirmed; Tentoglou, Mahuchikh and Germany’s Yemisi Ogunleye.
Bol and Lieke Klaver were both members of the Netherlands’ victorious mixed 4x400m team in Paris, but both will be focussed on their individual competitions in Madrid. European indoor 400m champion Klaver will take on the women’s 200m in the Spanish capital.
Hard fought competitions
Among many eye-catching events on the programme are the long jump competitions. In the women’s Mihambo will face European indoor champion Larissa Iapichino of Italy and Hilary Kpatcha of France, both of whom have jumped over seven metres already this season.
Meanwhile in the men’s, Tentoglou will face world indoor champion and world leader (8.37m) Mattia Furlani of Italy, plus decathlete Simon Ehammer of Switzerland, who is joint second in the world this year with a best of 8.34m.
The women’s 100m hurdles also promises to be another hard-fought competition, with all three 60m hurdles medallists from March’s Apeldoorn 2025 European Athletics Indoor Championships, Ditaji Kambundji (Switzerland), Nadine Visser (Netherlands) and Pia Skrzyszowska (Poland) set to renew their rivalry.