Van der Weken explains why she feels this is her year to shine with the European Indoor Championships just around rhe corner.
Patrizia van der Weken describes 2024 as a year of “firsts” and she made the most of every moment.
Now, with the European Indoor Championships and the World Indoor Championships both taking place within the next three weeks, the Luxembourgish sprinter is ready to build on those breakthroughs and make even more history for her nation.
“I had so many ‘first ever’ moments. It was amazing, and I hope that I can continue doing the same thing,” She told World Athletics.
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The 25-year-old reached her first world indoor final in Glasgow last year, her seventh-place finish in the 60m being the best placing ever achieved by an athlete from her country in the history of the World Indoor Championships.
She then became Luxembourg’s first women’s track event finalist at a European Athletics Championships and finished fourth in the 100m in Rome, her time of 11.04 just 0.01 off the silver and bronze medal-winning marks. In the semifinals she improved her national record to 11.00.
The Meeting de Paris one month later was her Wanda Diamond League debut and she won the 100m, clocking 11.06 into a significant headwind to beat a field featuring multiple major medallists.
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Then she returned to Paris to compete at her first Olympic Games, finishing fourth in her semifinal and receiving the honour of being her nation’s flag bearer at the closing ceremony.
She has certainly picked up from where she left off. After a short break, Van der Weken was more motivated than ever to get back to action and following training stints in Tenerife, South Africa and her base in Luxembourg, she ran another national record in just her second competition of 2025.
She maintained her fine form and that consistency was rewarded at the final meeting of the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold season in Madrid at the end of last month. Adding a win in the Spanish capital to her victories in Ostrava and Karlsruhe, she was crowned the overall 60m tour champion.
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Reflecting on the small break she took, she said: “I didn’t take a huge break after last year. I didn’t feel the need to switch off for too long. I had an off-season for about three weeks and then we continued where we left off. I felt really good really soon when I got back into training and everything felt quite natural. So, I was excited to come out and do well indoors, especially with Europeans coming up as I was a bit disappointed with how Europeans went two years ago.”
Next up is the European Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn, held from March 6-9, where she will look to build on that fourth-place finish in Rome and improve on her performance at the 2023 edition of the indoor competition in Istanbul, where she reached the 60m semifinals.