by Stuart Weir
The first event gave gold to the Netherlands, silver to Belgium, and bronze to Team GB! Stuart Weir keeps us close to the action! The crowd absolutely loved that the Netherlands, anchored by Femke Bol, took gold!
First medal for Team GB
We are good at relays! Medals in all five relays at the Paris Olympics and four at the 2023 Worlds. Getting medals at a European Indoors should not be too difficult. A complicating factor was that the mixed relay was on Thursday before 10.00pm, with the individual 400s the following day. Athletes with aspirations in the individual 400 were not likely to want a hard race the night before. Thus, for several teams – there were only six – no time for two rounds; it was effectively their second team.
“Princess of the quarter mile,” Femke had chosen to run the mixed relay. Whatever happened to the girl who, in 2022, ran the Worlds and then, three weeks later, the European full-house—400, 400h, and relay?
Bol anchored a weakened Dutch team to gold in Apeldoorn in 3:15.63. Team GB was always in contention, but one hesitant changeover saw the Belgians grab silver (3:16.19) with GB third in 3:16.49. An interesting fact about the GB team is that they all have a hurdling background!
The comments of the four GB athletes – in running order – were:
Alastair Chalmers: “It is a proud feeling to start the year and start the competition with a bronze medal. The team is powerful this year and has excellent depth. We were pushing for that medal, and everyone pulled through individually. The atmosphere was incredible”.
Emily Newnham: “It is such a big team to step into, and I am glad I held my own. I didn’t want to let anyone down and wanted to ensure I showed what I was capable of”.
Josh Faulds: “I walked out and went ‘whoah’. It was just like the atmosphere was crazy, and I was like, ‘We’ve just got to do the job now, we know we can get around, we’ve got to do what we can do. ’ We know we can do it, but it was nice to get round!”
Lina Nielsen: ”There is just so much to think about in an indoor 400m, let alone a relay. There were so many elbows out; I tripped about three times on that leg, so it was just about holding space and ensuring we came home in a good medal position. That home straight was very loud with Femke crossing the line, so it spurred me on!”
Britain will be expecting medals in the other two relays.
