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The three finalists for the 2024 women’s European Athlete of the Year trophy each won Olympic and European gold this summer and provided some of the most iconic sporting moments of the year.
The winners of the women’s and men’s European Athletes of the Year and the Rising Star awards will be announced at the Golden Tracks award night which will be held in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia on 26 October and streamed live on the European Athletics YouTube channel.
From a long-list of 10 athletes, the three finalists were decided based on a four-part voting process with a public vote, a Member Federation vote, a media vote and a European Athletics expert panel vote each accounting for one-quarter of the overall vote.
In alphabetical order, the three women’s European Athlete of the Year finalists for 2024 are:
Femke Bol (NED)
- European 400m hurdles and 4x400m champion
- Olympic mixed 4x400m champion
- Olympic 4x400m silver and 400m hurdles bronze medallist
- World indoor 400m record-holder at 49.17
- World indoor 400m and 4x400m champion
- European 400m hurdles record-holder at 50.95
- Diamond League 400m hurdles champion
Femke Bol is in contention for her third successive women’s European Athlete of the Year trophy after picking up the crown in both 2022 and 2023. And the Dutch athlete delivered another monumental season to put herself right in contention to win an unprecedented hat-trick.
She produced a superb indoor season, winning the 400m at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow in a world record of 49.17, before anchoring the Dutch to 4x400m gold. Heading outdoors, she won 400m hurdles gold and 4x400m gold at the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships.
Ever the committed relay runner, she also raced the mixed 4x400m and won bronze with her Dutch teammates. In the lead up to the Olympics, she set a European record in La Chaux-de-Fonds with 50.95. Onwards to Paris and she won her first Olympic gold medal in the mixed 4x400m, brilliantly snatching gold on the final leg with a characteristic burst, timed at 47.93 on the last leg.
She was disappointed to only come away with bronze in the 400m hurdles behind rival Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, but then added silver with the women’s 4x400m to complete the medal set.
Keely Hodgkinson (GBR)
- European 800m champion
- Olympic 800m champion
- World leader with 1:54.61
Since 2021, the British runner has come incredibly close to becoming the leading women’s 800m runner on the planet, winning Olympic silver and twice world silver. But this year was the year in which she took the last step to the pinnacle.
Her first two lap race came at the Diamond League in Eugene and a brilliantly executed victory in 1:55.78 set the tone for the summer ahead. Next up came Roma 2024 where she ran a controlled race to win her second ever European gold despite coming down with a head cold.
En route to Paris, Hodgkinson clocked a world leading 1:54.61 in front of her home crowd at the Diamond League in London to move to sixth on the world all-time 800m list before underlining her position as the dominant 800m runner, running to gold in the Stade de France in 1:56.72.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh (UKR)
- European high jump champion
- Olympic high jump champion
- World high jump record-holder with 2.10m
- Diamond League champion
Since winning silver at the 2019 World Athletics Championships aged barely 18 with a 2.04m clearance, Yaroslava Mahuchikh has been marked as a generational talent and 2024 was the year when she etched her name into high jump history.
She was below par when finishing second to Australian rival Nicola Olyslagers at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March. But it proved to be no more than a blip in a magnificent year for the Ukrainian, winning her second successive European Athletics Championship gold in Rome in June.
Then in the Diamond League in Paris in July, she broke the 37-year-old world record held by Stefka Kostadinova when she cleared 2.10m before returning to Paris the following month to win Olympic gold and complete the set of major high jump titles at the age of 22.
The last ten women’s European Athlete of the Year winners:
- 2023 – Femke Bol (NED)
- 2022 – Femke Bol (NED)
- 2021 – Sifan Hassan (NED)
- 2020 – not held
- 2019 – Mariya Lasitskene (RUS)
- 2018 – Dina Asher-Smith (GBR)
- 2017 – Katerina Stefanidi (GRE)
- 2016 – Ruth Beitia (ESP)
- 2015 – Dafne Schippers (NED)
- 2014 – Dafne Schippers (NED)
- 2013 – Zuzana Hejnová (CZE)
Chris Broadbent for European Athletics
