Femke Bol to run Debut 800m at Metz 8th February

Here's the announcement from European Athletics. I look forward to seeing how she does. I like that she's doing this race so early in the year. No reason to wait until spring. Makes sense to gauge where she's at now and then continue building from there. Also interested to know who else is in the field.

Might be an optimistic prediction but I think she'll run around 1:58-2:00 based on the fact that she's been in South Africa working on her endurance and has the indoor 500m world record.

Jogs a 1:58 at this meet.

1:55 early this summer.

1:53-flat WR late outdoor season.

I concur. She runs 1:59 or better

Can you imagine how smooth and controlled a 58 opening 400 will look for her, practically walking

Femke usually likes running at the same meets year after year and she often opened her indoor season in Metz in the past so it's not too surprising she's deciding to run here.

You don't have to imagine it. There is a video. She paced a 2:02 indoor 800 in Reykjavik in 2018 at age 17:

One thing they haven't said is if Bol will be in the feature 800. Metz always has 2 or 3 divisions of the women's 800. It's possible they will get her feet wet by opening in one of the lower seeded races.

If not, this is quite an ambitious debut. That meet is high profile and will have some of the bigger names in the 800. Duguma won it last year over Reekie. Others like Werro have competed there recently.

It's a sensible location for Bol's debut since all of her teammates will be there. Meuwly typically has all of his 400 group run both the 200 and 400 at Metz. Bol broke 50 indoors for the first time at Metz 2023.

FemkeMania!

Expect Great Things!!!

She won't break 2:00 in her first race. Sub-2:00 is rare indoors. Only 10 people in the world did it in 2025, with Sekgodiso leading the way with 1:58.4. Werro only ran 1:59.81, Reekie 1:59.72, Maloney 1:59.07, and Duguma 1:58.97.

Too many people are anointing her the World Champion before she has ever even run the distance. If she wants to be World Champion, she needs to stick to the 400H. That will be her only chance of ever winning an individual gold at the Olympics.

Femke is not listed in the entry list on the meet website. Assume she will be added soon. Her national teammate Eveline Saalberg is listed who normally runs the 400 so thinking Saalberg will be the pacer.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c-LSJSGIN0ey-N88GBqn2upSlH7yN67c/view

Oops, they have a pacer listed for that race so perhaps Saalberg is also thinking of moving up to the 800.

Saalberg did the same last year, a few 800m indoor and quite a lot outdoors. She switched to the 400m almost halfway through the summer season. Since she has been Bol's training buddy for the 800m, I suspect she'll race quite a few this year too. Her main focus however is usually the 400m and especially the 4x400 relays.

Will Keely be there too or is she ducking?

That list doesn't show entries for the `A` final, which is usually where the bigger names race. I suspect they'll release that line-up once they've announced/signed the other big names in that final.

Sub 2 isn't what it used to be. She should easily be under 2:00.

1:58 was good enough to win World Indoors last year! That'd be an incredible season opener for any top 800 woman, and Femke's only been doing 800 workouts for 4 months.

I think she runs 2:02, good time that she can keep building on for outdoors.

I am a fan and it will be exciting to see what she can do. I do wonder if the mental side will get to her - she won’t be winning races straight away. And she’s so used to that.

She did break a bit under the pressure in the Olympics. And she has some tough (both physically and mentally) competition in Keely. It’s great that they are friends though.

If that was the case, she would have stayed in the 400mh. So that's clearly not the case