Kratochvílová’s 400m record broken after four decades

A 41-year-old record held by Czech runner Jarmila Kratochvílová has been broken. On Sunday the Dutch athlete Femke Bol set a new indoor world record in the women’s 400 metres at the Dutch national championships in Apeldoorn in a time of 49.26 seconds, taking 0.33 of a second off the Czech’s long-standing record.

Kratochvílová set the hitherto record in Milan in 1982. The Czech, who is today 72, still holds the women’s 800m record, which she achieved in Munich the following year; it is the longest-standing individual world record in athletics.