Bol and Ingebrigtsen named 2023 European Athletes of the Year
Dutch athlete Femke Bol from the Netherlands and Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen were crowned European Athletes of the Year for the second successive year at the glittering annual Golden Tracks award ceremony in Vilnius, Lithuania on Saturday evening.
Both athletes came away with two gold medals at the Istanbul 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships as a prelude to brilliant outdoor campaigns highlighted by gold medals at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
After a dramatic fall in the mixed 4x400m final, Bol returned with a vengeance, winning gold medals in the 400m hurdles before closing the championships by anchoring the Netherlands to victory in the 4x400m - Europe’s 16th gold medal of the championships - while Ingebrigtsen turned 1500m silver into gold in the 5000m to retain his title.
Both athletes thoroughly revised the record books in 2023.
Bol improved the long-standing world indoor 400m record with 49.26 at the Dutch Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn - host venue of the 2025 European Athletics Indoor Championships - before reducing her own European 400m hurdles record to 51.45 at the London Diamond League meeting.
Ingebrigtsen set European records at no fewer than five different distances outdoors and concluded his summer by winning the mile and 3000m at the Diamond League final in Eugene on back-to-back afternoons in European records of 3:43.73 and 7:23.63 respectively.
He also set a world 2000m record of 4:43.13, a world two-mile best of 7:54.10 a,nd lowered his European 1500m record to 3:27.14.
Bol was nominated for the European Athlete of the Year award alongside fellow double world champion Maria Perez from Spain and Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh while Ingebrigtsen finished ahead of joint winner twelve months ago Armand Duplantis from Sweden and Greece’s Miltiadis Tentoglou for the award.
