It was a huge weekend of athletics with some historic results at the Pacé 2025 European 10,000m Cup, Femke Bol returning to the track at the Rabat Diamond League, and World Continental Tour meetings in Silesia and Zagreb. Here are some of the talking points that emerged…
Femke Bol’s new hurdles technique
Having not raced in any individual discipline since last September, there was already plenty of interest in the world and European champion’s season opener over the 400m hurdles in Rabat on Sunday (25). Further intrigue was added when it was revealed that she would be premiering a different technique, choosing to attack the opening hurdle with her weaker right leg lead.
It meant she would alternate lead legs for the first five hurdles and then, from the sixth to the final tenth hurdle, she would focus on her stronger left leg lead through to the finish.
“I think we thought that hurdle seven was a bit too far,” she explained, referring to the point in the race where she would typically add a stride between hurdles and focus on a single lead leg. “I was often a bit slow from 200 to 300 metres, we thought that was where I really can become better.
“So then we were thinking how we can do it. And it was either switch at hurdle five, because I want to finish with my left leg as my good leg, or switch at hurdle six which we thought was the sweet spot.
“But I would have to change the blocks and how I go over the first hurdle with my wrong (right) leg. But we gave it a try, and I must say I think my start was better than before, so it was a pretty good try.”
With a meeting record of 52.46 and her fastest ever season opener, it seems the switch is paying early dividends for Bol as she strives for marginal improvements to try and defend her World Athletics Championship title against the likes of Olympic champion and world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in Tokyo this September.
The rise of Belgian distance running
It was another weekend of firsts for Belgian distance running. Jana Van Lent ran clear for victory in the senior women’s race at the European 10,000m Cup in Pacé, France, on Saturday (24). It was the first ever Belgian victory in 27 editions. With teammate Chloé Herbiet taking bronze and helping Belgium win the women’s team title—plus the men’s team winning silver—it was a historic result for the Belgians.
At April’s inaugural European Running Championships in Brussels-Leuven, Herbiet and Juliette Thomas took gold and silver for the hosts in the women’s half marathon. Isaac Kimeli won bronze in the men’s 10km race, and in the team competitions, Belgium also won women’s half marathon gold, men’s marathon silver, men’s 10km bronze, and women’s marathon bronze.
Belgium also won silver in the senior men’s team competition and bronze in the senior women’s team competition at the Antalya 2024 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in December. Is the nation on the cusp of a golden era of distance running?
Who will dominate the men’s discus this year?
Mykolas Alekna’s staggering world record of 75.56m, set in Romana, USA on 13 April, placed him firmly atop the rankings for the men’s discus this year. But the excellent form of European champion Kristjan Čeh this weekend (24/25) has advanced his cause as the best on the planet.
He set a brilliant new national record of 72.34m in Zagreb on Saturday to go sixth on the world all-time list and followed up with a similarly impressive 72.11m in Ptuj, Slovenia, on Sunday (25).
Čeh’s best effort of the year puts him third in this year’s top lists, but he is the only athlete in the top 12 to have set his best throw outside of the same competition where Alekna set the world record, where the favourable Oklahoma winds helped deliver personal bests galore. Lithuanian Alekna, an Olympic and world silver medallist, has yet to compete in Europe this year.
Nor has Paris Olympic gold medallist Roje Stona of Jamaica. And with Sweden’s Tokyo Olympic and defending world gold medallist Daniel Ståhl having had only one outing so far this year, there is a fascinating season ahead in one of track and field’s most competitive events in the current era.
A German resurgence?
It has been a relatively fallow period for German athletics with the notable exception of prodigious medal-winning long jumper Malaika Mihambo and Yemisi Ogunleye’s surprise win in the women’s shot put at the Paris Olympics.
But with no medals at the Budapest 2023 World Athletics Championships, 12th place on the medal table at Roma 2024, and 16th place at the Apeldoorn 2025 European Athletics Indoor Championships, Germany is seeking a return to its status as one of the sport’s European giants.
This weekend showed some encouraging signs that Germany could be on its way back and once again a force to be reckoned with at the Madrid 2025 European Athletics Team Championships on 27–29 June.
Men’s javelin thrower Julian Weber followed up his breakthrough 91.06m throw at last week’s Doha Diamond League with a second successive victory over India’s world champion Neeraj Chopra, sending his spear to 86.12m in Silesia, Poland on Friday (24).
After missing most of 2024 due to illness, 2022 European 5000m gold medallist Konstanze Klosterhalfen showed she is getting back to her best by setting a new national record in the women’s 10km of 30:46 in Laredo, Spain.
To round off a great weekend for Germany, 27-year-old Frederik Ruppert chased home Olympic champion Soufiane El Bakkali of Morocco in the 3000m steeplechase at the Rabat Diamond League, clocking 8:01.49 to slash nearly 15 seconds off his previous best. It was a new German record and moves him to third on the European all-time list.
Brits on the comeback trail
After injury forced them to miss both the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships and the 2024 Paris Olympics, British duo Jazmin Sawyers and Jake Wightman returned to winning form this weekend.
Sawyers, the women’s long jump gold medallist at the Istanbul 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships, missed the entirety of 2024 due to a ruptured Achilles. After making her first appearance on home soil in Loughborough last weekend with 6.53m, she leapt to 6.66m (+1.8m/s) to win in Weinheim, Germany, on Saturday (24).
2022 world 1500m champion Jake Wightman missed the 2023 campaign with a foot injury, and a hamstring tear meant he missed out on Roma 2024 and the Paris Olympics last year. But he got back to winning ways in Los Angeles, USA, on Saturday (24), winning the men’s 1500m in 3:35.26. Can they get back to their best for Madrid 2025 and the Tokyo World Athletics Championships?
Chris Broadbent for Eruopean Athletics