Dutch athlete Femke Bol broke the world indoor 400 metres record at the Dutch Indoor Championships in the Netherlands yesterday clocking a sensational time of 49.26 seconds.

The 22-year-old running the race of her life in the city of Apeldoorn, managed to take off a little more than three hundredths of a  second off the previous best of 49.59 seconds set by Jarmila Kra-toch-vilova on March 7 1982.

Bol, a world and Olympic 400 meters hurdles medallist, has already made history before, as she set a world 300 meters hurdles best of 36.86 seconds in Ostrava last year, and in her first race of this season, she ran a world indoor 500 metres best of 1 minute 05.63 seconds in Boston.