 Bolingo at the 2018 European Championships in Berlin | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Cynthia Maduengele Bolingo Mbongo |
| Born | 12 January 1993 Uccle, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium |
| Height | 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in) |
| Weight | 54 kg (119 lb) |
| Sport | |
| Sport | Athletics |
| Event(s) | 100 m, 200 m, 400m |
| Club | CABW |
| Coached by | Jean Pecher (–2012) Carole Bam (2012–2024) Gary Evans(2024- |
Medal record | |
Cynthia Maduengele Bolingo Mbongo (born 12 January 1993), [1] known as Cynthia Bolingo, is a Belgian sprinter. In a career beset with injuries, she won the silver medal in the 400 metres at the 2019 European Athletics Indoor Championships and the bronze medal in the 4 x 400 metres at the 2024 European Athletics Championships.
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Bolingo competed in the 200 metres at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing without advancing from the first round.
A few weeks after winning that silver medal in the 400 metres at the 2019 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, Bolingo felt a pain in her Achilles that got worse and worse and finally forced her to scrap the entire 2019 season. It would be 18 months before she ran in competition again. [2]
On 1 June 2021, she broke the Belgian record on the 400 metres at a meeting in Montreuil, France; with a time of 50 seconds and 75 hundreds, she improved upon the 16-year-old time of 51 seconds 45 hundreds by Kim Gevaert, and qualified to compete at the 2020 Olympics. [3] A month later, she broke it again, lowering it to 50.29 seconds. [4] But then, in the final run-up for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, she sustained a hamstring injury in training camp in Mito, Japan, making it impossible for her to run at the Olympics. [5]
On 22 August 2023 she qualified for the 400m final of the world championships by setting a time of 49 s 96 in the semi-final, improving her Belgian record and becoming the first Belgian to reach the final of a 400 metres at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest.
In June 2024, she was on the Belgian 4 x 400 metres women's relay team that won a bronze medal at the European Athletics Championships. [6] Early July she again sustained an injury during a 400m race. [7] The injury prevented her from running in both the 4x400 women's and mixed relays at the 2024 Summer Olympics denting Belgian teams's chances for a medal. In the only race she did compete in at the Olympics, the women's 400 metres, an obviously not fit Bolingo finished a disappointing 42nd in the heats. [8]
