"Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up."

It's an unforgettable line that stays with you from the first time you hear it on screen to years and years later, so much so that you end up quoting it every chance you get. It is a line that sets up the crux of a movie trilogy so beautifully.

And so we go to that line again to describe an incredible week for Netherlands' superstar athlete Femke Bol at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest.

The first of Femke's falls came on the opening night. The mixed 4x400m relay has been a fascinating addition to the global athletics calendar. On Day 1 of action, it was a highly anticipated final. It came down to USA and Netherlands and it was Bol who was leading in the final stretch. The 23-year-old, who has recently played second-fiddle to the magnificent Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in their main event of the 400m hurdles, had the finish line – and a first Worlds gold – in sight. Just a few metres to go, she was keeping Alexis Holmes of USA at an arm's length, but the gap started to close and the pressure started to increase on the Dutch athlete.

Then Femke fell. Stumbled onto the track, lost her baton. The gold turned into a "DNF" for Bol and her teammates. A silver turned into gold for Holmes and USA. And with a World Record time, for good measure. Well, well, well, how the turntables.

“I do not know what happened,” Bol said later. “It has never happened to me before. I cramped towards the finish line. I was pushing, pushing, pushing. I was disappointed that my body did not have it in to finish the race strongly.”  

Why do we fall?

Then in the middle of the week came Bol's first shot at redemption. She walked onto the same tracks again for the 400m hurdles final, where she started as an overwhelming favourite in McLaughlin's absence. That brought a different kind of pressure. Surely the track must have scared her at some level? If she could stumble and fall in 400m flat, what guarantee does it not happen in a hurdles race? She walked out for the final, slapping herself repeatedly on her cheeks till they turned red, presumably to get the adrenaline going. And once the race began, her strides were confident as they almost always are and she strode her way to a confident gold. World champion, finally. And by some distance. Absolute domination.

That alone might have made for a pretty darn good redemption story. But she wasn't done yet. She was just getting ready to make Christopher Nolan's incredible script for that epic moment look rather ordinary.

In the women's 4x400m, Netherlands were heading for a creditable bronze. Jamaica's Stacey Ann Williams was leading the way for Jamaica and Nicole Yeargin of Great Britain was in second as the athletes crossed the final bend and began their last push towards the finish line in the climactic event of Budapest 2023.

Bol, however, had other ideas. With an incredible (or Incredi-Bol, as World Athletics put it) final kick, the Flying Dutchwoman strode past Yeargin first, to move into second place. Silver would have been sensational. But Bol wasn't done yet. With her long strides, at almost the exact point where she fell on the opening night, she overtook Williams to take an improbable gold.

Why do we fall?

As commentator Rob Walker called it brilliantly at the end:

"Live sport cannot be beaten for drama! She fell at the line when the Dutch looked certain to take the mixed 4x400 title. And with a fairy tale finish you could not make up in Hollywood, Femke Bol has stolen, STOLEN, the last gold for the Netherlands."

Femke fell again. With her back on the track, with tears of joy this time. And some fatigue too, presumably. Even as her teammates mobbed her, including the male athletes who had just ran their 4x400, she took some time by herself. Not far from where she fell on the opening day, she had a moment with her nemesis. She scripted a redemption story better than anyone could have ever imagined.

"The first three legs went so well, I felt like I had to finish as strongly as I could,” Bol was quoted as saying by World Athletics. “I wanted to stay patient, but in the last metres I said 'No, we have to take it'. “It was one of my most important runs ever, but it is the first time we became world champions so it applies for all of us. Every tenth and hundredth of a second was needed. We had good exchanges and still barely won it.”

And because such things happen in front of our eyes in real-time, we will be forever grateful for the existence of sports. In the end, one is left with a modification of the line that Alfred Pennyworth uttered in that magnificent scene in Batman Begins: Why do we watch sports, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up again after failing.