European Athletics has announced the finalists for the 2022 Athlete of Europe. The winner will be announced on October 22 at the Gala evening in Tallinn (Estonia). Last year, this recognition went to Sifan Hassan, who won three medals in Tokyo 2020 Olympics – gold in the 5,000m and 10,000m and bronze in the 1,500m.
This year, the three finalists who will compete for the award are Femke Bol (Netherlands), Yaroslava Mahuchikh (Ukraine) and Nafissatou Thiam (Belgium).
Femke Bol won seven medals at the major championships in 2022, including a historic treble at the European Championships in Munich. There she became the first athlete in history (men and women) with European titles in the 400m and 400m hurdles. Femke Bol, 22, also led the Netherlands’ women’s 4x400m relay team to gold in 3:20.87. She also set 6 national records during the year. She won 10 of her 11 400m events on the season, beaten only by Sydney McLaughlin, who won the world title in Eugene in a world record time of 50.68 sec. Femke Bol also achieved the world’s all-time top result in the 300m hurdles – 36.86 sec in Ostrava.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh also had a remarkable year despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the winter, she won the world indoor title in Belgrade in the high jump, and in the summer she added a European gold. At the World Outdoor Championships in Eugene, the 21-year-old Ukrainian remained with a silver medal. At the Diamond League in Brussels, Yaroslava Mahuchikh cleared 2.05m and then set the bar at 2.10m in an attempt to better Stefka Kostadinova’s world record of 2.09m, but was unsuccessful.
Nafissatou Thiam also had an impressive season. The Belgian first won the world title in the heptathlon in Eugene, and less than a month later she also won the European gold in the discipline. At the World Championships in the USA, she recorded the second-highest score of her career – 6947 points and secured the European title with a total of 6628 points.
