Odira, Moraa set for new challenge after Dutch star joins 800m club

Kenya's world champions Mary Moraa and Lilian Odira are all set for a new challenge on the track following the announcement that two-time 400m hurdles world champion Femke Bol will be shifting her discipline to the 800m next year.

Bol, 25, made the surprise decision in a short clip on her social media on Friday, 10 October, labelling the 800m as a “new chapter.”

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In the video, Bol sat through her old notebooks which covered her exploits on the track as a professional - spanning from the 2022 European Championships, Tokyo 2021 and Paris 2024 Olympics, and the 2023 and 2025 World Athletics Championships.

At the end of the video, she opened a blank page with ‘800M’ written on it saying: “And now it is time for a new chapter.”

The decision, which few saw coming, comes barely a month after the Dutchwoman stamped her authority as the leading 400m hurdler, when she defended her world title in Tokyo in a world-leading time of 51.54.

Victory in Japan meant she successfully defended her world championship from two years ago in Budapest, and seemingly opened up a new horizon for her in the distance.

After a short break however, it just so seems that her quest is bigger than dominating one discipline, with her latest challenge being in the two-lap distance.

Speaking to Athletics Weekly shortly after the announcement, Bol said: "The 400m hurdles provided me with unforgettable moments and shaped me into the athlete I am today. The 800m is new and unfamiliar territory, and that’s precisely what makes it so interesting.

The training approach will be different from what I’m used to, and it will require a lot of perseverance to develop at this distance and achieve my goal – competing at the highest level.”

A current indoor world-record holder of the 400m, Bol’s personal best in the 800m is only 2:19.51, a time she set indoors in January 2017 in Dortmund.

A look at her previous results shows that the last time she ran a race longer than the 400m was in February 2023, when she timed 1:05.63 in the indoor 500m in Boston.

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On the basis of that performance, which still stands to date as a World Best, Bol’s coach Laurent Mewly, in 2023 hinted the Olympic silver medalist would shift to the two laps, saying: “I think she's also able to perform over 800m. She showed in Boston that she has this efficiency, and she's pretty good in all the endurance sessions because of it. I can imagine [the 800m] might also be an option.”

Two years later, and the reality has dawned - a prospect that is tantalising as it gets.

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