Anouk Vetter (; born 4 February 1993) is a Dutch

track and field Track and field (or athletics in British English) is a sport that includes Competition#Sports, athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name used in North America is derived from where the sport takes place, a ru ...

athlete who competes in the

combined events Combined track and field events are competitions in which athletes participate in a number of track and field events, earning points for their performance in each event, which adds to a total points score. Outdoors, the most common combined events ...

. She won the silver medal in the

heptathlon A heptathlon is a track and field combined events contest made up of seven events. The name derives from the Greek ἑπτά (hepta, meaning "seven") and ἄθλος (áthlos, or ἄθλον, áthlon, meaning "competition"). A competitor in a hep ...

at the

2020 Tokyo Olympics The officially the and officially branded as were an international multi-sport event that was held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some of the preliminary sporting events beginning on 21 July 2021. Tokyo ...

. Vetter claimed bronze and silver in the event at the

2017 2017 was designated as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development by the United Nations General Assembly. Events January * January 1 – Istanbul nightclub shooting: A gunman dressed as Santa Claus opens fire at the ...

and

2022 World Athletics Championships The 2022 World Athletics Championships was the eighteenth edition of the World Athletics Championships. It was held at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, United States, from July 15–24, 2022, with the country hosting that competition for the ...

respectively. She took the gold medal at the 2016 European Championships. She is the Dutch record holder for the heptathlon with a score 6867 points, and won eight national titles (mostly for the

long jump The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a gr ...

Early life

Anouk Vetter was on born 4 February 1993 in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. Vetter was exposed to athletics at a very young age. Her father, Ronald Vetter, is a long-standing athletics coach and her mother, Gerda Vetter-Blokziel a two-time Dutch javelin champion. "I grew up on the track, running around from the age of four and five playing on the high jump mat," she recalls.Patience reaps dividends in Vetter's rise through the heptathlon ranks
International Association of Athletics Federations - IAAF, 19 December 2017

Career

Her passion became the

. However, her frail body was susceptible to injury. She failed to finish a heptathlon at either the

2011 European Athletics Junior Championships The 21st European Athletics Junior Championships were held between 21 and 24 July 2011 in the Kadriorg Stadium in Tallinn, Estonia. Russia topped the medal table with 18 medals overall, including 8 golds, ahead of Germany and Great Britain. Men's ...

2012 World Junior Championships in Athletics The 2012 World Athletics U20 Championships, World Junior Championships in Athletics was an international Sport of athletics, athletics competition for athletes qualifying as Junior (athletics), juniors (born 1993 or later) which was held at the E ...

and the

2013 European Athletics U23 Championships The 2013 European Athletics U23 Championships were the 9th edition of the biennial athletics (sport), athletics competition between European athletes under the age of twenty-three. It was held in Tampere, Finland from 10 to 14 July. Russia topped ...

. After replacing her coach in 2012 with her father, she decreased her training to 80 per cent compared to the other women in the combined event group to protect her fragile body. She won the Multistars Firenze Trofeo Zerneri Acciai, the opening meeting of the 2013

IAAF Combined Events Challenge The World Athletics Combined Events Tour (formerly IAAF Combined Events Challenge and World Athletics Challenge – Combined Events) is an annual series of combined track and field events meetings, organised since 1998 by World Athletics, with hep ...

with 5872 points.Krauchanka and Vetter triumph in Florence – IAAF Combined Events Challenge
International Association of Athletics Federations - IAAF, 3 May 2013 140601-061 Anouk Vetter - 2014

Her breakthrough came in 2014 when she improved her previous personal best by a massive 444 points to 6316 points at that year's prestigious

Hypo-Meeting The Hypo-Meeting is an annual athletics (sport), athletics competition that takes place in the Mösle stadium in Götzis in Vorarlberg (Austria) held in the spring (late May, early June). In its history, a total of three world records have been se ...

Götzis Götzis is a town in the western Austrian state of Vorarlberg. The Alpine Rhine valley municipality belongs to the district of Feldkirch. Population Events The town is well known for its annual hypo-combined events meeting, the so-called ...

, Austria to place ninth. "Gotzis was really special," she remembered. "It is always fantastic to compete there because the crowd is so close to the track." Later that year she finished seventh at the Zürich European Championships. In 2015, Vetter finished sixth at the Hypo-Meeting with a new personal best with 6458 points, and won the heptathlon at the Mehrkampf-Meeting in

Ratingen Ratingen (; ) is a town in the district of Mettmann in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It lies in the northwestern part of Berg about 12 km northeast of Düsseldorf. Administration With a communal reform of 1975 the independent municipalit ...

, Germany. Despite an injury, she also competed in the heptathlon event at the

2015 World Championships in Athletics The 2015 IAAF World Championships ( zh, 第十五届世界田径锦标赛), the fifteenth edition of the IAAF World Championships, were held from 22 to 30 August at the National Stadium in Beijing, China. Forty-three nations won medals, 144 of ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, where she reached the 12th place with 6267 points. "Bearing in mind I didn’t think I could even start the competition, mentally it was a really big step for me," she reflected later.

European champion

She started the 2016 season with an eighth place at the

. In July, Vetter took a surprise victory at the European Championships heptathlon in her home town Amsterdam, with a score of 6626 points, an improvement of the national record of

Dafne Schippers Dafne Schippers (; born 15 June 1992) is a Dutch retired track and field athlete who competed in sprinting and the combined events. She holds the European record in the 200 metres with a time of 21.63 seconds, making her the sixth-fastest woman ...

. "To win that European title was amazing," she remembered. "Suddenly I was out of the shadow of the big girls." At the

2016 Rio Olympics The 2016 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad () and officially branded as Rio 2016, were an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with preliminary events i ...

, however, she finished on a disappointing 10th place. She started the 2017 outdoor season with a seventh place in Götzis. In August 2017, Vetter set a new national heptathlon record of 6636 points at the

World Championships A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game ...

in London, where she won the bronze medal, behind 2016 Olympic champion

Nafissatou Thiam Nafissatou "Nafi" Thiam (; born 19 August 1994) is a Belgian Sport of athletics, athlete specialising in multi-event competition. She is the first athlete with three multi-event gold medals at the Olympic Games, winning the heptathlon at the At ...

(gold) and

Carolin Schäfer Carolin Schäfer (born 5 December 1991) is a German Sport of athletics, athlete who specialises in the heptathlon. She won the silver medal in the event at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics. Schäfer took bronze at the 2018 European Athle ...

(silver). She concluded the season with a win at the heptathlon at the

Décastar Décastar (stylised ''DECASTAR'') is an annual Sport of athletics, athletics competition that takes place in Talence, in the Departments of France, department of the Gironde in France. Organised by ADEL'ADEM it is one of the athletics meetings tha ...

Talence Talence (, ; , ; ) is a commune in the department of Gironde, administrative region of New Aquitaine, France. It is the third-largest suburb of the city of Bordeaux, and is adjacent to it on the south side. It is a member of the Bordeaux Mét ...

, France. For the second year in a row she finished second in the IAAF Combined Events Challenge. At the 2018 Hypo-Meeting in Götzis, Vetter finished fourth behind

, Yorgelis Rodriguez and Erica Bougard. At the European Championships in Berlin she finished fifth place. The year 2019 was a difficult period in her career, due to injuries and doubts with the sport. She did not finish the combined events competitions at the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow, the Decastar in Talence and the

in Doha. Depressed she did not start at the final event, the 800 meters. "I had physical injuries with my knee," she later explained. "But it was more than that. I was putting too much pressure on myself. I had a hard time enjoying athletics, and I had a battle inside my head."Vetter: little goals, big results
World Athletics, 14 March 2021

Come back

In 2021, Vetter made her come back winning the silver medal at the postponed

in Japan, with a new national record, behind Nafissatou Thiam who successfully defended her 2016 Olympic title. She led through the first day before Thiam and after world champion

Katarina Johnson-Thompson Katarina Mary Johnson-Thompson, (born 9 January 1993) is an English athlete. A multi-eventer, she is primarily known as both a heptathlete and an indoor pentathlete. In heptathlon she is a double world champion, double Commonwealth Games c ...

had to leave the competition due to an injury. In May 2022, she won the

in Götzis with a new national record after setting a meet record in the javelin throw of 59.81 m. Later that year, she won silver at the

Eugene Eugene may refer to: People and fictional characters * Eugene (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Gene Eugene, stage name of Canadian born actor, record producer, engineer, composer and musi ...

(USA) with yet another national record. She led the contest until the last event, when Thiam surpassed her.Thiam regains world heptathlon title in Oregon
World Athletics, 18 July 2022 In August at the Munich European Championships she had to withdraw from the competition due to an Achilles tendon injury.

Statistics

International competitions

Detailed heptathlon scores

Key:

Personal bests

Circuit wins

World Athletics Combined Events Tour The World Athletics Combined Events Tour (formerly IAAF Combined Events Challenge and World Athletics Challenge – Combined Events) is an annual series of combined track and field events meetings, organised since 1998 by World Athletics, with hep ...

** 2013:

Multistars Multistars is an annual international Combined track and field events competition held in Desenzano del Garda, Italy in late April or early May as part of the IAAF World Combined Events Challenge. International athletes compete in the decathlon ...

** 2015: Mehrkampf-Meeting ** 2017:

** 2022:

()

National titles

Dutch Athletics Championships The Dutch Athletics Championships () is an annual outdoor track and field competition organised by the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation, which serves as the national championship for the sport in the Netherlands. It is typically held as a two- or ...

Long jump The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a gr ...

: 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 **

Javelin throw The javelin throw is a track and field event where the javelin, a spear about in length, is thrown as far as possible. The javelin thrower gains momentum by running within a predetermined area. Javelin throwing is an event of both the men's de ...

: 2019 *

Dutch Indoor Athletics Championships The Dutch Indoor Athletics Championships () is an annual indoor track and field competition organised by the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation, which serves as the national championship for the sport in the Netherlands.1993 births Living people Athletes from Amsterdam Athletes (track and field) at the 2016 Summer Olympics Athletes (track and field) at the 2020 Summer Olympics Athletes (track and field) at the 2024 Summer Olympics Dutch Athletics Championships winners Dutch heptathletes Dutch Indoor Athletics Championships winners European Athletics Championships medalists Medalists at the 2020 Summer Olympics Olympic athletes for the Netherlands Olympic heptathletes Olympic silver medalists for the Netherlands Olympic silver medalists in athletics (track and field) World Athletics Championships athletes for the Netherlands World Athletics Championships medalists 21st-century Dutch sportswomen