Alida van Daalen

Alida van Daalen (; born 12 April 2002) is a Dutch track and field athlete who competes in shot put and discus.

Early life Alida van Daalen was born on 12 April 2002.

Van Daalen was brought up in initially in Suriname, but lives with the pigment disease vitiligo, which causes her skin to show white spots and does not tolerate the sun well, and her family relocated to Rotterdam.

In 2022, she started at the University of Florida in the United States and began competing for the Florida Gators. She won the shot put at the SEC Indoor Championships and SEC Outdoor Championships and placed fourth at NCAA Division I Indoor Championships and NCAA Outdoor Championships.

Career Van Daalen competed at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She then won bronze in the shot put and silver in the discus, at the 2018 European Athletics U18 Championships in Győr.

Competing at the 2021 European Athletics U20 Championships in Tallinn, Estonia, she won the silver medal in the shot put and the discus events.

Competing at the European Athletics U23 Championships in Espoo, Finland, she won the gold medal in both the shot put and the discus events. She won the shot put with a European U23 leading distance of 18.32m. She was selected for the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August 2023.

She competed at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris in the shot put and discus.

She set a meeting record of 65.24 metres to win the discus at the 2025 SEC Championships in May 2025. In September 2025, she competed at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan, reaching the final and placing eleventh overall.

On 9 April 2026 in Ramona, Oklahoma, she set a new personal best for the discus throw of 67.99 metres. On 12 April, she improved again to 69.17m in Ramona. In May, she won the discus throw at the SEC Championships, before throwing 69.31m in the NCAA East Regional at Lexington, to move to third on the all-time collegiate list behind Jorinde van Klinken and Jayden Ulrich. On 13 June, she set a new meeting record to win the women’s discus with a throw of 65.98 meters at the 2026 NCAA Outdoor Championships. On 3 July, she placed third overall in the discus throw at the 2026 Prefontaine Classic. Competing at the 2026 European Championships in Birmingham in August, van Daalen, was fourth with 64.22m in the discus throw. At the championships she was also a finalist in the women's shot put.

Statistics Information based on her World Athletics profile unless noted otherwise. Discus throw 54.99 m

Discus throw 55.63 m

Shot put 16.56 m

5th Shot put 15.80 m

Discus throw 55.02 m European Championships Munich, Germany 18th Discus throw 56.05 m

Shot put 18.32 m

Discus throw 56.77 m World Championships Budapest, Hungary 19th (q) Shot put 17.93 m

26th (q) Shot put 16.53 m 16th (q) Discus throw 62.19 m 2025 World Championships Tokyo, Japan 9th Discus throw 62.24 m 2026 European Championships Birmingham, United Kingdom 4th Discus throw 64.22 m