Athletics · international
Bol retains world hurdles title as Jones and Zapletalová set lifetime marks
Femke Bol defended her 400 metres hurdles world title in 51.54 seconds on 19 September, with Jasmine Jones taking silver and Emma Zapletalová bronze.
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The champion delivers at the decisive moment
Femke Bol retained the women's 400 metres hurdles world title in Tokyo on 19 September, winning the final in 51.54 seconds. The time was the fastest in the world in 2025 and gave her a 54-hundredths advantage over Jasmine Jones of the United States. Jones's 52.08 was a personal best. Slovakia's Emma Zapletalová won bronze in 53.00, setting a national record in her first World Athletics Championships final.
Bol had first won the individual title in Budapest in 2023 and arrived in Tokyo unbeaten in the event during 2025. Defending it required her to reproduce that form under championship pressure. Her result did so while also improving the season's benchmark, making the race a successful title defence and her strongest 400 m hurdles performance of the year.
The separation comes on the final bend
European Athletics described Jones as contesting the lead during the first half of the race. Bol took control between 200 and 300 metres, entered the home straight with a clear advantage and maintained her form through the finish. The winning margin emerged from that sustained final section rather than an early escape that left the outcome settled from the start.
Bol's post-race explanation emphasised execution, concentration and the work her training group had put into finishing races more strongly. She regarded the last 100 metres as her best of the season. That account helps explain the decisive feature of the final: she turned a closely contested opening into clear separation while continuing to negotiate the remaining hurdles at speed.
A tight contest for bronze
Zapletalová raced from lane two and caught Olympic silver medallist Anna Cockrell after the final hurdle, taking bronze by 13 hundredths. Cockrell finished fourth in 53.13. The Slovak athlete's 53.00 was both a national record and a first world-championship medal, and European Athletics noted that she trains in the same group as Bol.
Panama's Gianna Woodruff placed fifth in 53.34, Belgium's Naomi van den Broeck sixth in 53.70, and Dalilah Muhammad of the United States seventh in 54.82. Jamaica's Shiann Salmon completed the final in 56.27. Those official results show two separate scales of competition: Bol's 54-hundredths winning margin, and the much smaller difference that decided which athlete joined her and Jones on the podium.
What the title means in its wider setting
Olympic champion and world-record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone contested the flat 400 metres in Tokyo rather than this hurdles final. Her absence was a material part of the event's context, but it did not determine the times Bol and her challengers still had to run. Bol finished against an American group containing Jones, Cockrell and Muhammad, and two of the three medallists improved their lifetime best or national record.
The official sheet distinguished Bol's world-leading 51.54 from the world record of 50.37 and championship record of 50.68, both held by McLaughlin-Levrone. It therefore supports a precise description: a 2025 world lead and a second consecutive world title. For Dutch athletics, the defence placed Bol alongside Dafne Schippers as a woman to retain an individual outdoor world title. For Jones and Zapletalová, Tokyo supplied personal milestones within the same final.
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