Dutch athlete Femke Bol puts Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone on notice ahead of Paris

Team USA's world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is not so lonely at the top.

Femke Bol has put the reigning Olympic Champion on notice. The 24-year-old Dutch athlete stormed to a new European record of 50.95 seconds at the Resisprint La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland on Sunday. Bol now joins McLaughlin-Levrone, also 24, as the only two women to ever run under 51 seconds in the event.

Bol’s time is now the third-fastest in history, although the top two times still belong to McLaughlin-Levrone, who broke her own world record last month at the U.S. Olympic Trials in a time of 50.65. McLaughlin-Levrone ran the second-fastest time in history at the 2022 World Championships, where she set a then-world record of 50.68 seconds .

Bol and McLaughlin-Levrone are so far ahead of the rest of the field that their times in the 400m hurdles would have qualified them for the 400m flat in Paris. Standing together but a long way from everyone else, their rivalry will be one to watch in Paris.

McLaughlin-Levrone has dominated the 400m hurdles since beating American rival and 2016 Olympic Champion Dalilah Muhammad in Tokyo. Bol placed third in that race, but she is now running over one second faster than her bronze-medal winning time of 52.03. Now an indoor 400m world record holder and two-time European Athlete of the Year, Bol’s upward trajectory has been impressive, and she now owns three of the fastest performances on the top 10 all-time list. McLaughlin, meanwhile, claims six of these times.

The pair have had limited opportunities to race head-to-head since McLaughlin-Levrone edged out Bol in the 2022 World Championships at Hayward Field. Last season, McLaughlin-Levrone briefly switched her focus to the 400m flat and a knee injury forced her to withdraw from the 2023 World Championships. Bol dominated and won last year’s World Championship in McLaughlin-Levrone’s absence.

With both athletes now healthy and at their best, track fans will finally get to witness the highly-anticipated showdown between the world’s best. Whoever comes out on top, both athletes are set to push each other to a new height. A historic sub-50-second performance no longer seems out of reach.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dutch athlete Femke Bol puts Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone on notice ahead of Paris