Femke Broeders-Bol has the best stage she could ask for to prove that her 800m debut run wasn’t just beginner’s luck. There are only a handful of athletes who have truly excelled in multiple disciplines. Broeders-Bol wants to join them after thriving in the 400m and 400m hurdles. Her pick? The 800m. The 26-year-old thrived across the 400m and 400m hurdles, winning 35 medals across her professional career, 24 of them gold. But in the unknown territory of the 800m, her first-ever attempt saw her finish second to Audrey Werro, earning a Diamond League invitation for the same category.

Broeders-Bol will be at the starting line for the 800m at the Paris Diamond League at the end of June. The 26-year-old will face some real superstars in the distance, including Audrey Werro. The Swiss athlete is arguably the best female runner in the distance, having recently beaten Broeders-Bol to the finish line.

The pair raced at the Ostrava Golden Spike meet, where the Dutch and the Swiss stars clashed heads for the first time in the 800. It was the 26-year-old’s debut in the distance, and she still managed to finish second. However, Werro was a class apart as the 22-year-old clocked an impressive 1:54.45, finishing nearly three seconds ahead of Broeders-Bol.

That number defines the phenomenal twelve months that the rising Swiss star has had. She capped it all off with a 1:53.98 time at the Stockholm DL in early June. She broke the Swiss national record and clocked the third-fastest time ever in world history. It’s only milliseconds off Jarmila Kratochvilova’s world record time of 1:53.28.

While slower than her record-breaking time, Werro showed Broeders-Bol just how far she has to go. But Femke’s run was impressive for a first race. Especially since it took the 26-year-old into third on the Dutch all-time list, behind Ellen van Lange and Sifan Hassan. The four-time Olympic medalist will have a chance to improve on her current personal best when she runs at the FBK Games.

Set to take place on June 21, a week before the Paris DL, it’ll mark the second time Femke Broeders-Bol runs the 800. The Olympian will be racing on home soil, and the competition will be just as tough, with 2019 world champion Halimah Nakaayi and Australia’s Abbey Caldwell lining up next to her.

Even then, and despite her recent loss to Audrey Werro, Femke Broeders-Bol’s coach, Laurent Meuwly, believes his charge has a chance at doing very well in the distance.

Femke Broeders-Bol’s coach opens up on her running 800m

Considering Femke Broeders-Bol broke a world record and won countless medals, it surprised many when she stepped away from the 400m hurdles, which the 26-year-old has run since 2019. But after Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s success, that is not all that shocking.

Her switch to the 800 was a little surprising since the Dutch star hadn’t raced in that discipline for nearly a decade. After finishing only behind world lead Audrey Werro in her 800m debut. Now, she’s targeting more, and her coach, Laurent Meuwly, has nothing but faith in the sprinter.

“I think she’ll surprise a lot of people in this first month of competition,” Meuwly said as per Yahoo Sport. “There’s a lot of excitement because it’s been a long period without racing. We’re looking forward to a new challenge.”

It certainly will be a challenge, especially if Femke Broeders-Bol is targeting the world record, which currently stands at 1:53.28, set by Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983. It is also the longest-standing individual record in outdoor track and field.

To put Broeders-Bol’s chances in perspective, since the 2020s started, only four women have broken into the top ten. Audrey Werro was the latest. The other three are Georgia Hunter Bell (1:54.90), Lilian Odira (1:54.60), and Keely Hodgkinson (1:54.33), are the other three.

Moving even further back, since the turn of the millennium, only ten women have broken into the top twenty. It’s a tough ask, especially with Broeders-Bol finishing almost three seconds behind Werro in her promising 800m debut. Even so, Meuwly believes that his student can achieve something magnificent.

“I’ve always said that if Femke switched to the 800 metres, it was because I also felt that the 800-metre world record was more within her reach than the 400m hurdles record,” Meuwly explained.

“It’s a record that dates back a very long time, from an era when we know there were quite a few doping issues, so there’s a bit of a myth surrounding this 800m record.

“But when we started considering making the switch, I was absolutely convinced that it was possible for women to run 1:52, or even faster.”

A second outing in Hengelo and a first Diamond League will offer a clearer picture of where Broeders-Bol stands. For now, though, her coach’s confidence suggests that the Dutch star’s experiment is turning into something serious.