GENEVA (AP) — Emerging track star Audrey Werro is racing closer and closer to winning a duel with Olympic 800-meters champion Keely Hodgkinson to break the sport’s oldest world record.
On Sunday, for the second time this month, the 22-year-old Swiss ran the third-fastest time in history — 1 minute, 53:80 seconds in Paris that was the best since 1983.
Werro celebrated with her trademark roar with hands raised like claws, a gesture she has said was inspired by her father urging her to be less shy in races and more like a lion.
Only Jarmila Kratochvílová’s record 1:53.28 for the then-Czechoslovakia, three years after the Soviet Union’s Nadezhda Olizarenko ran 1:53.43 to win the 1980 Moscow Olympics title, have gone faster.
Werro, who clocked 1:53.98 in Stockholm three weeks ago, has the record in her sights in a season with no distractions from an Olympics or world championships.
“It’s really very, very close,” Werro said Sunday trackside at the Diamond League meeting at Charléty in the Paris suburbs. “I’m really just happy to have my personal best which is already unbelievable.”
Record-setting year
Taking down a record long thought out of reach from the doping-tainted 1980s in track and field shaped as a target this year.
Hodgkinson set the stage in February by shattering the 24-year world indoor mark with a 1:54.87 run in Liévin, France.
The 2024 Paris Olympics champion also set a personal best outdoor time of 1:54.33, though that earned just second place behind Werro in Stockholm and is now seventh on the all-time list.
Showdown at Europeans
The 24-year-old Hodgkinson has targeted the Diamond League meeting in London on July 18 as a record attempt, before a standout rematch with Werro at the European Championships. Also in the lineup could be Dutch star Femke Broeders-Bol, the two-time 400 hurdles world champion, who switched to the 800 and was second Sunday in 1:55.60.
The women’s 800 is the Friday finale on Aug. 14 at Birmingham, in Hodgkinson’s home country England.
Werro should then have home advantage Aug. 21 in Lausanne in the main event of the Athletissima meeting.
Going pro
Werro did not even make the semifinals at the Paris Olympics. In the 2025 world championships final in Tokyo she placed sixth, as favorite Hodgkinson took just bronze in a race won by Lilian Odira of Kenya.
There is one good reason for the Swiss prospect’s rapid progress.
“I feel that the biggest change in my life is the fact that I have become a professional athlete,” Werro said Sunday. “I am no longer at school, and I must say it was tough to juggle both.”
“Now, there is no excuse as I have all the time in the world to just focus on the training, recovering and the sport itself.”
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