Dos Santos and Russell Break World Records on Historic Zurich Night

The Zurich Diamond League delivered two world records and one of the fastest women’s 800m races ever recorded, as Alison dos Santos and Masai Russell rewrote the record books and Audrey Werro narrowly missed the sport’s oldest outdoor global mark. BBC Sport reported that the performances unfolded before a capacity crowd of 25,000.

Watch the highlights:

Dos Santos broke the men’s 400m hurdles world record with a time of 45.80 seconds. The 26-year-old Brazilian lowered Karsten Warholm’s 45.94 mark from 2021, improving sharply on his own previous best of 46.29. Warholm finished a distant second as Dos Santos extended his unbeaten run in the event this season.

Russell added a second world record 75 minutes later, winning the women’s 100m hurdles in 12.09 seconds. The Olympic champion trimmed three hundredths from Tobi Amusan’s previous record of 12.12. Amusan finished second, while the 26-year-old American completed a breakthrough after coming within one tenth of the former mark five times across the previous two seasons.

Werro came within 0.42 seconds of Jarmila Kratochvilova’s women’s 800m world record, clocking 1:53.70. Kratochvilova’s 1:53.28 has stood for 43 years. The 22-year-old Swiss athlete stayed close to the infield pacing lights through the final 100 metres but could not sustain the record pace to the line.

The run was nevertheless the third-fastest women’s 800m in history and lowered Werro’s personal best by another tenth of a second. According to BBC Sport, she now owns four of the 10 fastest performances ever in the event, all achieved this summer. Femke Broeders-Bol set a Dutch record of 1:54.71 for second place, with Georgia Hunter Bell third.

Elsewhere in Zurich, Olympic champion Julian Alfred handed Melissa Jefferson-Wooden her first 100m defeat in two years, winning by photo finish. Emmanuel Wanyonyi took the men’s 800m in 1:41.76, short of David Rudisha’s 1:40.91 world record, while Armand Duplantis missed three attempts to raise his pole vault record to 6.32 metres.