We speak to the man who has been watching the Netherlands’ growing influence on the sprints and hurdles landscape about building a platform for success.
Laurent Mull is the head coach of sprints, hurdles and relays in the Netherlands and is best known for multiple world and European champion Femke Bol, Olympic medley 4x400m relay champion and two-time Olympic bronze medalist and European record holder in the 400m hurdles.
Based in the Olympic Training Center Papendal, he works with a group of Dutch athletes including Liek Claver (Olympic, World and European Relay Champion); Nadine Visser (4x100m European bronze medalist and fourth in the 2024 Olympics 100m hurdles); Limarvin Bonevacia (Olympic, World and European relay medalist and European 400m bronze medalist); and Isaiah Klein Ikkink (Olympic 4x400m medley relay gold medalist). He also coaches Swiss sprinter Ajla Del Ponte (2021 European 60m indoor champion and Tokyo Olympics 100m finalist); world under-20 200m silver medalist and Australian 100m national record holder Tori Lewis; 400 m 20-year-old world champion Lourdes Manuel (Czech Republic); 400m indoor European champion Attila Molnar (Hungary), European indoor record holder.
Muley was previously head coach of sprints, steeplechase and relays in Switzerland. During that time he transformed the fortunes of the Swiss in the 4x100m relay and coached Lea Sprunger, the Swiss national record holder in the 400m and 400m hurdles, to European titles in the 400m (indoor) and 400m hurdles.
How did you first get into coaching?
I was an athlete in my hometown club (Switzerland). The club needed coaches to look after the young athletes once a week, but soon it became twice, then three, four and five.
I started working with these club athletes very early, I was only 18 years old, and my goal was to help them reach their full potential. I went from a club coach to a regional center coach, a national center coach, and then a national coach in Switzerland.
I had a lot of injuries as a young athlete, and that was one of my motivations to start coaching, because I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes my coaches made with me.
In October 2018, I was invited to Papendal for a coaching congress. (Former British Athletics head coach) Charles van Komene had just started again as Netherlands manager. He followed my speeches a little, as well as the trainings that I conducted. A month later, he called me and asked me to join his team. I discussed with my main athletes if they would follow me to the Netherlands and I made the decision to move. I started in April 2019.
What attracted you to the Netherlands job after your success in Switzerland?
At that time, it had nothing to do with the talent of the athletes, because there were already very few of them. This was partly due to what I had seen at Papendal – the facilities and organization of the center – but also because of Charles’ vision of high performance, which is really close to me.
The rest I’ve developed since I started, as we’ve gone from three athletes in the 400m and 400m hurdles to now 15 or more, and that’s not including the short sprints and short hurdles.
Charles knew that while it’s great to have athletes in a program, you also need good coaches. A few months later he asked me. “We need a new national coach for middle and long distances, who would you bring?” We brought in Tomasz Lewandowski and made some good progress with Niels Laros (Dutch Olympic and World 1500m finalist and multiple national record holder) and Stefan Nilissen (European U23 1500m champion and Dutch indoor record holder). Charles was good at that and I think that’s one of the things that changed from 2019 to 2022 and led to the successful development of Dutch athletics.
What was your program like when you first started?
My approach to these types of projects is always to start with relays as I think it creates a good dynamic.
I started with the 4x400m projects to get more people interested in the 400m. I’m not really a patient guy when it comes to high performance, so Charles was saying, “It’s going to take time to close the gap,” but I told him we should have been at the World Cup that first year (Doha 2019), which we were, and we made it to the women’s final.
That was the beginning, and then individual athletes began to develop through the relay. I think that is the key. It’s really hard to take one athlete and move up, and it’s not always sustainable, but I think when you start with a relay project, you get a bigger base of athletes and a lot of them have a better chance of developing to the highest level.
What were some other things you implemented in those early years that contributed to the success of the program?
We trained a little more. I was also impressed with the amount of experts available from the Papendal Olympic Committee, such as nutrition, physiology, biomechanics and the medical team, but they were a bit underutilized and understimulated, so I tried to challenge them to try new things. Charles was a fan of it too, so that helped a lot.
They also had very good facilities, but nothing in terms of recovery, so very quickly we installed a well-organized rehabilitation facility: ice bath, sauna, sleeping pods, with a good medical team and physio in each session.
I think we really raised the bar everywhere, not just with the athletes. We started doing more/longer training sessions and the athletes became more professional. Overall, I think the organization became more professional.
How has your coaching philosophy evolved?
It has evolved with the level of athletes I have coached. When you start at a club, everyone’s at school or doing an apprenticeship or whatever, and you have to adjust to them because they’re not professional athletes.
The volume part evolved with more professional athletes, so being able to train harder but still have time to properly recover after sessions. In terms of training, I think when I started, my approach was very sprinting, but if I focus on the sprint hurdles, after a few years I got to a point where I realized that to train more, to recover faster from training, we need a bigger aerobic base. I think over the years this has become one of the hallmarks of my training philosophy.
Our training is very polarized. we focus on speed and strength year-round, but at the same time we run a lot of miles at a slow pace with short rests. A lot of trainers around the world think it slows you down, but I think it helps a lot with recovery and also supports the harder, more lactic acid sessions.
Who has been your biggest coaching influence?
In reality, there are no specific people. I’ve got a coaching qualification for the theoretical base, but I’ve also learned a lot at camps abroad and interacting with other training groups, watching what they do, trying to figure out what will add value to my philosophy, the content of my training and of course staying up to date with the latest developments in science.
I also look for the right experience in each area – nutrition, rehabilitation, physiology, biomechanics – and to make sure I’m surrounded by experts who can bring different perspectives to my work.
So it’s not one person or one point of view, but more being open to what others are doing, or sharing knowledge with people who are more expert in certain areas than I am, and then filtering that information and discovering what best fits my philosophy.
Has coaching changed since your first start?
When I first started coaching it was very directive, athletes coming in with a program and a plan, but now I’m letting my athletes express more and more opinions. They know the program and they know the philosophy. I can integrate the athletes more because they are at a different level and have a different experience.
There are also challenges. Coaches should be careful with young athletes and teach them to gradually become professional athletes. They need to stay aware and be able to adapt.
We talk a lot now about creating a safe environment for athletes, but it’s a very fine line where you can push athletes too far or what kind of remarks you can make. Sometimes it can make our job difficult because there are high performers around who don’t really understand that athletics is a very competitive sport.
I think for some coaches who were active 30, 40 years ago, they had a hard time adapting to the new generations, the new environment. Or the environment is still the same, but the perspective of the people is slightly different. That’s the hard part. Personally, I try to maintain a high standard of performance, but of course adapt my speaking, my training to the new generation and the new rules.
Femke’s move to the 800m has generated considerable interest. How do you manage the risks and expectations of change for such a high-profile athlete?
I think it starts with good communication, but also being realistic about what’s possible. We discussed the 800m project for a long time.
In fact, after a disappointment in Paris (finishing third in the Olympic 400m steeplechase final), he almost wanted to switch directly to the 800m in 2025. It wasn’t too early for him, but I thought it would be a shame to end a great 400m hurdles career on a negative note. Luckily, I convinced him for another year and it worked out very well.
I have information that tells me it’s realistic for Femke to be one of the best 800m runners in the world in the next three years and challenge for a gold medal in Los Angeles, because I wouldn’t suggest such a change to an athlete of this caliber without some assurance that it would be successful.
Some things are, of course, a bit subjective. his pace, his composure, the way he manages to keep his form even when he is in the last part of the race, but a lot of it is also objective; For example, he holds the indoor 500m world record (1:05.63). If he had just run another 100m, he probably would have held the 600m indoor record as well.
READ MORE. Femke Bol’s 800m potential analyzed
The plan is to be competitive in 2026, be in the finals or top five in 2027 and medal in 2028. I don’t think it’s an unrealistic plan.
Race-specific work, speed, strength, is not a problem, he’s very good at the anaerobic part, but he needs to get better at the aerobic part, gradually build a solid foundation. It’s like starting a new sport because when you’re a world and Olympic champion, it’s harder to be patient and adapt to things like that.
