Het Atletiektopic #62 Parijs in zicht

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Op zaterdag 18 mei 2024 staat er tijdens de Next Generation Athletics een topveld op alle looponderdelen van 400 meter tot en met 10.000 meter. Deze races zijn speciaal ontworpen om Nederlandse atleten de kans te geven zich te kwalificeren voor diverse internationale kampioenschappen, waaronder de Olympische Spelen in Parijs (1 – 11 augustus), het EK in Rome (7 – 12 juni), het EK onder 18 jaar in Banska Bystrica (18 – 21 juli) en het WK onder 20 jaar in Lima (26 – 31 augustus). Je kunt hier een overzicht vinden van alle kampioenschappen in 2024. Voor publiek: alle Nederlandse limietlopers zijn herkenbaar zijn aan gekleurd startnummer en sticker op de broek in dezelfde kleur als de Wavelight.

‘We verwachten een recordaantal limieten, baanrecords en hopen op zoveel mogelijk beste jaarprestaties op Nederlandse bodem.’

Record aantal series op de 800 en 1500 meter
Zowel op de 800 en 1500 staan een recordaantal series op het programma. De topseries in het hoofdprogramma zijn van ongekend niveau. In totaal zijn er 14 series op de 800 meter en 8 series op de 1500 meter.

Op de 1500 meter zal Robin van Riel, hij werd in één jaar Nederlands kampioen outdoor, cross en indoor, proberen de EK én Olympische limiet te gaan lopen. Vorig jaar won Robin de 1500 meter in Nijmegen. Hij loopt in een sterke internationale serie, waar ook de snelle Nederlanders Mike Foppen, Stefan Nillessen, Mahadi Abdi Ali, Tim Verbaandert, Job IJtsma en Bram Anderiessen in zitten. Ook zij zullen in een grote groep weggaan op een tijd van 3.34. De start van de 1500 meter mannen is om 21:21. Bij de dames is de Tsjechische Diana Mezulianikova de snelste op papier (pr. 4.07). Ook hier een grote groep Nederlandse dames, waaronder Ineke van Koldam, Femke Rosbergen, Sarah Pierik en Loes Kempe. Ook de 16-jarige Kaate Mulders loopt in de A-serie 1500 meter. Haar doel is de limiet voor EK U18 (4.25.42). Startlijst 1500 meter dames.

Ook op de 800 meter wordt spektakel verwacht. In beide topraces veel snelle internationale atleten, maar we zien ook hier enkele top Nederlanders terug in de A-serie. In de vrouwenrace zijn dat onder andere Danaïd Prinsen, Priscilla van Oorschot en Maud de Jong. De mannen starten om 21.08 en in deze heat zien we naast veel internationale lopers de Nederlanders Maarten Plaum, Samuel Chapple en Jurgen Wielart.

Nederlands kampioenschap 10.000 meter
Voor het eerst vinden de Nederlandse kampioenschappen 10.000 meter plaats in Nijmegen. De titelverdedigers van vorig jaar, Noah Schutte en Silke Jonkman, zijn er niet bij. Twee nieuwe kampioenen op de 10.000 meter dus. De favorieten zijn bij de vrouwen (start 19:28) Veerle Bakker, Merel van der Marel en Britt Ummels. Om 21:48, de slotafstand zaterdag, starten de mannen, met medaillekansen voor Bas van Hooren, Nik Lemmink, Tom Hendrikse, Lucas Nieuweboer en Frank Futselaar. Ook hier zet de organisatie Wavelight en hazen in.

Limietpoging Diane van Es op 5000 meter
In 2021 plaatste Diane van Es zich, door een geweldige slotronde, voor de Olympische Spelen van Tokio. In Nijmegen loopt ze weer de 5000 meter en andermaal is de Olympische limiet het doel. Diane is al geplaatst op de 10.000 meter voor de Spelen van Parijs, de Nederlandse Olympische limiet op de 5000 meter staat op 15:00,00. In dezelfde race (20:41) maakt Silke Jonkman na een lange blessureperiode haar comeback op de baan. In Nijmegen zien we haar op de 5000 meter. Silke is in voorbereiding op de EK Atletiek in Rome (juni) waarvoor ze al geplaatst is voor de 10.000 meter. Bij de mannen zal een grote groep met snelle Afrikaanse lopers de strijd aangaan om de winst.

400 meter
Vorig jaar was de 400 meter nieuw op het programma van de NGA. Dat beviel en het niveau van de mannen en vrouwen races is flink gestegen. Het huidige niveau in Nederland op de 400 meter is hoog, dat zie je terug in het deelnemersveld. Bij de dames zien we leden van het succesvolle 4x 400-meter team aan de start. Het estafetteteam is al geplaatst voor de EK en Olympische Spelen. In aanloop naar deze toernooien zien we onder andere Eveline Saalberg, Andrea Bouma[/b] en Myrte van der Schoot op Sportpark Brakkenstein. Bij de mannen lijkt een tijd in de 45 seconden noodzakelijk voor de winst. Twee Nederlands in de A-race: Jonas Phijffers en Nout Wardenburg.

Steeples terug in Nijmegen
Na vijf jaar afwezigheid staan er zaterdag 18 mei maar liefst vier (!) steeple races op het programma bij de NGA. Bij de mannen en bij de vrouwen wordt er een 2000 én een 3000 meter steeple gelopen. Heel veel nationale en internationale limietpogingen, bij de senioren en junioren. Opvallende Nederlandse namen zijn Nick Marsman, Irene van der Reijken en Jetske van Kampen. Startlijsten: Dames 3000 steeple, Mannen 3000 steeple, Dames junioren 2000 steeple en Heren junioren 2000 steeple.

De organisatie zal opnieuw het innovatieve Wavelightsysteem gebruiken. Dit systeem maakt gebruik van lampjes op de binnenbaan om het gewenste tempo aan te geven tijdens de races. Hierdoor kunnen toeschouwers gemakkelijk volgen of de atleten op schema liggen om hun limiet of persoonlijk record te behalen. Alle series zijn ingedeeld op tijd en de organisatie zal, samen met de Atletiekunie, zorgen voor een livestream. NGA maakt deel uit van de Track & Field-serie van de Atletiekunie.

Live
De races van NGA zijn live te volgen via de livestream en liveresults.

Next Generation Athletics 2024

Belangrijke informatie
■Locatie: Sportpark Brakkenstein, Nijmegen
■Parkeren: Radboud Sportcentrum
■Entree: ¤ 5,00 (gratis entree voor atleten met 1 begeleider en jeugd tot 16 jaar)
■Clubhuis Nijmegen Atletiek geopend vanaf 14:00 uur voor koffie, thee, drankjes en gezonde snacks.

Meer info op www.nextgenerationathletics.nl en Hardloopnetwerk is ook dit jaar weer trotse mediapartner van Next Generation Athletics.

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We've only ever seen Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone vs. Femke Bol in the 400m hurdles twice .

Tokyo Olympics – McLaughlin-Levrone runs 51.46 to win gold, breaks her own world record. 🥇 Bol runs 52.03 for bronze. 🥉

2022 World Championships – McLaughlin-Levrone drops a 50.68 to shatter her own world record. 🥇Bol runs 52.27 for silver. 🥈

If we don't see these two go head-to-head before the Paris Olympic final, we will have gone 748 days between seeing these two race head-to-head.

Since their last race in Eugene in 2022...

🇺🇸 McLaughlin-Levrone:
• Took a break from the hurdles for all of 2023.
• Raced just five times (including the rounds of the U.S. Championships) to focus on the 400m.
•Clocked a 48.74 for the second-fastest time in U.S. history.
• Missed the World Championships due to a small PCL tear in her left knee.
• Back at full health and racing this season. Opened up with a 12.71 for the 100m hurdles and a wind-aided 22.38 for 200m just two weeks ago.

🇳🇱 Femke Bol:
• Kept going after Worlds in '22 to claim European Championship 400m and 400m hurdles gold.
• Raced 29 times in 2023 with a full indoor season, where she ran the indoor 400m world record of 49.26 and added two more European Indoor Gold Medals
• Claimed gold in the 400m hurdles and 4x400m relay at the World Championships
• Has already raced 14 times in 2024. Including lowering her indoor 400m world record twice to 49.17.
Won World Indoor gold in the 400m and 4x400m relay.
• Has yet to open up her outdoor season individually.

tl;dr – THEY'VE BOTH GOTTEN BETTER AND FASTER SINCE THE 2022 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS SO GET YOUR POPCORN READY FOR PARIS.

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After not racing any hurdle races in 2023 and winning last year’s U.S. 400m title in 48.74 (second-fastest in U.S. history), coach Bobby Kersee told NBC Sports that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone will be returning to the 400m hurdles as her focus for the Paris Olympics.

🗣️ “I think Sydney’s love is the 400m hurdles, and so that’s the number one event,” Kersee told NBC Sports. “My job is to make sure that she gets ready for the one that she wants to do the most.”

She is the reigning Olympic champion and world record holder in the event. The Netherlands’ Femke Bol is the reigning world champion, Olympic bronze medalist and second-fastest woman in history with her 51.45 personal best set at last July’s London Diamond League.

Last month, McLaughlin-Levrone ran 12.71 for the 100m hurdles (the second-fastest time of her career) and has also run a wind-aided 22.38 for 200m. She is scheduled to run the 200m at tomorrow’s LA Grand Prix.

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De Europese Kampioenschappen Atletiek vinden plaats van vrijdag 7 tot en met woensdag 12 juni in Rome, Italië. In totaal komen 59 Nederlandse atleten uit in oranje op dit Europees Kampioenschap: 29 vrouwen en 30 mannen.

Met nog zo’n anderhalve maand tot de Olympische Spelen staan de Europese Kampioenschappen in Rome garant voor spektakel; de beste Europese atleten zullen erop gebrand zijn hier hun vorm te testen en te strijden voor het eremetaal.

Nu, 50 jaar nadat Rome de Europese Kampioenschappen Atletiek organiseerde in 1974, keert het evenement terug naar het authentieke Olympic Stadium, temidden van het Foro Italico Park. Het iconische Stadio dei Marmi, gelegen naast het Olympic Stadium, heeft onlangs een volledige renovatie ondergaan en zal dienen als warming up track tijdens de Europese Kampioenschappen.

Sterk team over de hele breedte
Technisch Directeur Vincent Kortbeek blikt vooruit: “De Europese Kampioenschappen in Rome zullen voor ons team een belangrijke opmaat zijn richting Parijs, nauwelijks 50 dagen later. Dit resulteert erin dat een aantal atleten Rome bewust overslaat; met Parijs in hun achterhoofd. Maar de afvaardiging die in Rome aan de start staat, is er een waar we als Atletiekunie trots op kunnen zijn. Met een sterk team over de hele breedte en met tal van kanshebbers voor medailles en finales, zullen we meestrijden met de Europese top.”

M
Taymir Burnet (100 meter, 200 meter, 4x100m estafette)
Liemarvin Bonevacia (400 meter, 4x400m estafette (M en mixed))
Niels Laros (800 meter, 1500 meter)
Ryan Clarke (800 meter)
Noah Baltus (1500 meter)
Mike Foppen, Tim Verbaandert, Mahadi Abdi Ali (5000 meter)
Noah Schutte (10.000 meter)
Mark Heiden, Job Geerds, Timme Koster (110m horden)
Nick Smidt (400m horden)
Douwe Amels (hoogspringen)
Menno Vloon (polsstokhoogspringen)
Ruben Rolvink, Shaquille Emanuelson (discuswerpen)
Denzel Comenentia (kogelslingeren)
Jeff Tesselaar (tienkamp)
Filmon Tesfu (halve marathon)
Xavi Mo-Ajok, Nsikak Ekpo, Elvis Afrifa, Onyema Adigida, Churandy Martina (4x100m estafette)
Ramsey Angela (4x400m M en mixed)
Isaya Klein Ikkink (4x400m M en mixed)
Isayah Boers (4x400m M)
Terrence Agard (4x400m M)
Nout Wardenburg (4x400m M)

V
Tasa Jiya (200 meter, 4x100m estafette)
Lieke Klaver (400 meter
4x400m estafette (V en mixed))
Marissa Damink (1500 meter)
Maureen Koster (5000 meter)
Diane van Es, Jasmijn Lau, Jennifer Gulikers, Veerle Bakker, Silke Jonkman (10.000 meter)
Nadine Visser (100m horden, 4x100m estafette)
Maayke Tjin A-Lim (100m horden)
Femke Bol, Cathelijn Peeters (400m horden, 4x400m estafette (V en mixed))
Pauline Hondema (verspringen)
Jessica Schilder, Bente König (kogelstoten)
Jorinde van Klinken (kogelstoten, discuswerpen)
Sofie Dokter, Marijke Esselink (zevenkamp)
Anne Luijten, Jacelyn Gruppen (halve marathon)
Marije van Hunenstijn, Minke Bisschops, Naomi Sedney, Isabel van den Berg (4x100m estafette)
Anne van de Wiel, Eveline Saalberg, Lisanne de Witte, Myrte van der Schoot (4x400m estafette)

*Kanttekening bij selectie: we zijn nog in afwachting van definitieve bevestiging vanuit European Athletics op deelname voor enkele atleten die nu nog niet 100% zeker zijn van hun ranking positie.

https://www.atletiek.nl/a(...)ek-atletiek-in-rome/

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Op zondag 2 juni 2024 05:54 schreef Pino112 het volgende:
Bij de NOS staat:
[..]
Is ze twee jaar geblesseerd geweest ofzo?

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Such is the grace and talent of the Dutch hurdler and sprinter that she appears to have the ability to bend time to her will - as well as a rare beauty in her technique.

In the lead-up to every Olympics a handful of athletes become the focus of expectant attention. From this handful one emerges or is selected as the “face” of the Games. In London in 2012 it was Jessica Ennis, who as a heptathlete embodied all-round Olympian excellence. This visibility is not solely a question of athletic ability; Ennis fulfilled the host nation’s hopes by winning gold and by being incredibly nice, all the time. Usain Bolt’s face and long limbs dominated multiple championships because he was the fastest, one of the most likable and – as a result – the most heavily sponsored track athlete in the world. Every time his image appeared somewhere – ie everywhere – it promoted an associative bundle comprising his running shoes (Puma), Visa, Gatorade, Jamaica, the Olympic ideal and, by a kind of meta extension, the value of sponsorship itself.

But whereas 90% of the footballers at this year’s Euros will already be familiar to most people watching them on TV, in athletics this figure is probably reversed. The best-known athletes to emerge from a given championship might be people the majority of viewers had scarcely even heard of before. This would be true of Josh Kerr – identified, paradoxically, by his identity-obscuring Oakley shades – who surged to fame by beating Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the 1500m at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest last year, only to fade back into (temporary) obscurity when, outrageously, he was not even shortlisted for the BBC’s increasingly irrelevant Sports Personality of the Year.

I was only vaguely conscious of Femke Bol before the Budapest championships. For those as ignorant now as I was then, she is a 24-year-old Dutch 400m hurdler and sprinter whose Budapest experience began disastrously. In an innovative and welcome event, the 400m mixed relay, she was neck and neck with the American Alexis Holmes until she stumbled and fell a few metres short of the line, spilling the baton, disqualifying herself and her team but thankfully – since the fall looked horrendous – avoiding injury. Five days later, as anticipated, she won the 400m hurdles, an awkward and exhausting event but not so riddled with jeopardy as the 110 (which meant that Colin Jackson, the former world-record holder, never clinched Olympic gold).

Then came the traditional close of the championships in the form of the 4x400 relays: first the men and then the women. The 4x400 is very different to the explosive, serial excitement of the 100m relay, in which batons are routinely dropped and hand-overs fumbled. Even when the race has been clearly won there follows a period of uncertainty as footage is scrutinised to see if any change-overs took place fractionally outside the box and so on. Deciding who should be awarded which medals often takes substantially longer than the race itself.

Such infringements also happen in the less frenetic and more spacious 4x400. The first leg is run in lanes before the second batch of runners head for the inside lanes midway through their lap. Subsequent hand-overs are characterised by a crowding-round-the-bar, desperately-waving-a-tenner-to-catch-the-bartender’s-eye-at-last-orders jostle, which can cause the wheels to come off even a well-drilled team. The much-fancied American quartet did not make the final, having been disqualified in the heats.

That left the Dutch, Canadians and Jamaicans as favourites, and the British with an improved chance of a place on the podium. After a long hold on the blocks the race began. Colin Jackson, commentating for the BBC, is always good at conveying the excitement of big races and, not for the first time, this excitement got the better of him to the extent that much of what he said turned into enthusiastic gibberish. Femke Bol was running the anchor leg (how I love that expression!) and at the last hand-over was in third place, way behind Nicole Yeargin of Britain and Stacey-Ann Williams of Jamaica, who was in the lead.

In the aftermath of a change-over, each leg tends to subside into a gentler phase. By any normal standards they’re going hell for leather, of course, but this is not the sharply competitive part of the race as the athletes concentrate on settling into the cadence of their running. On this occasion, though, Williams went powering out as though the end might already be in sight. As she glanced up at the screen the immediate threat seemed to come from Yeargin. Bol was trailing in their wake, part of the event, obviously (in bronze medal position), but so far adrift that Jackson’s co-commentator, Steve Cram, said she was not even going for gold. What happened next is best conveyed by the closing words of WH Auden’s poem The Fall of Rome: Bol started shrinking that distance, “silently and very fast”.

Sport is not a beauty contest and athletic excellence is not always easy on the eye. I can’t bear to watch Cameron Norrie; he has the ugliest forehand in tennis history. Every time he hits the ball it’s a punch in the face of elegance. Roger Federer had the most beautiful game of any male player. Beauty is currently in short supply in women’s tennis for the simple reason that the single-handed backhand is as extinct as a bird whose pleasing but fragile plumage has rendered it unfit, in evolutionary terms, to survive the WTA’s grinding schedule of constant global migration. Joe Frazier was a heroic boxer, throwing punches so hard that, in his own brutally beautiful formulation, “they’d of knocked a building down”; it was the person on the receiving end of that onslaught, Muhammad Ali, who was beautiful. Sprinter Ben Johnson erupted out of the blocks as if desperate to burst free of his body’s limitations in a way that was consistent with Saint-Just’s declaration: “I despise the dust of which I am compounded”; the speed of his detested rival Carl Lewis was contained by – and a sleek celebration of – the body. This kind of relationship is not simply one of hostility, or at least is enhanced by adversarial intensity. George Best looked more beautiful because of the lengths hard men such as Ron “Chopper” Harris were willing to go in order to make him less so.

A characteristic of this beauty is the illusion of effortlessness and an abundance of grace. Gravity seems to press less heavily on some athletes than on others (hence “float like a butterfly”) and as a consequence – I’m conscious here of getting lost in the mysteries of physics – time expands.

Kerr beat Ingebrigtsen in a right old ding-dong. Interviewed after the race, Kerr said that at a certain point he knew he had “broken him” but to anyone watching it seemed possible that Ingebrigtsen might break him back. In the end he couldn’t, Kerr butched it out, kept pumping. There was no physical contact but the confrontational quality of the race lingered afterwards in Ingebrigtsen’s distinctly grudging and ungracious admission of defeat.

It was very different in the closing stages of the women’s 4x400. Within broadly agreed ideas of biomechanically efficient technique, each athlete has a distinct style and rhythm. (Occasionally this is so distinct as to lie outside the consensual norm; Michael Johnson’s oddly formal, straight-backed style of propulsion suggests he turned to running after being rushed off his feet as a waiter in a fine-dining restaurant.) In Bol’s case it’s not just that she appears fully at ease running at high speed; the faster she runs the more at ease she looks.

Commentators talk of athletes eating up the ground but that is too physical a metaphor. Athletics is about the body, but sometimes there’s a metaphysical dimension or radiance to it. While it didn’t seem physically possible for Bol to make up all the necessary ground, the duration of each second somehow expanded – even as the distance to the finishing line shrank – so that more and more could be accomplished within it. There was more time and space even as less of both remained! With her lengthy, easy, unforced stride – a stride that seemed to meet not with resistance but active encouragement each time a foot touched the track – Bol was clearly gaining on Yeargin. Might she even catch Williams? It was tactical, everything needed to be perfectly judged, but a sense of inevitability began to manifest itself: a feeling that wherever the line might be Bol would get there first. And she did, flowing past Williams with just 0.16 of a second between them.

There was more to come. Having mis-called what was happening earlier, Cram made up for it by declaring “Femke Bol is AmAAAzing”. Anything less than this heartfelt outpouring of astonishment would have been a horrible understatement. She had won the race but it was a team victory. Her teammates left her with a great deal to do but they hadn’t left her with too much to do. She collapsed on the track, “spent” as Jackson rightly said, while her teammates swarmed all over her. Then came something especially lovely. The Dutch men’s team, who had not come close to a medal themselves, bounded on to the track and everyone was embracing. Watching these eight young people in a constantly shifting tangle of perfect arms and legs it seemed that, as an encore, we were being treated to a game of elite-level Twister. It was a world away from middle-aged Luis Rubiales, in a suit, baldly kissing the Spanish footballer Jenni Hermoso on the lips. This was more physical and less intrusive, an appropriate and shared expression of joy. And then the rival teams congratulated the Dutch. That was the most important thing of all. An intensely individual achievement had expanded to become more widely embraced and affirmed – and therefore a victory for sportsmanship.

Since that ecstatic triumph Bol has gone on to break the world indoor 400m record. She is poised to become one of the stars – perhaps the star – of the Paris Games and, before then, at the European Championships in Rome. Conscious that this little essay has strayed from its journalistic lane and stepped into the lexicon of love I’ll end it in similar fashion: I’m counting the days till I see her (run) again.

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Ook chocolabehoefte houdt Klaver nauwgezet bij: 'Ben 24/7 met voeding bezig'
Elke training wordt bijgehouden, elke gram wordt genoteerd. Atlete Lieke Klaver overlegt in de laatste maanden voor Parijs alles met haar diëtist van TeamNL. "Ook als ik even zin in suiker heb, dan weet hij ervan."

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Op zondag 30 juni 2024 12:57 schreef Jason22 het volgende:
We hebben er een nieuwe speerwerptopper erbij!

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