How a once-banned race became one of the centrepieces of the track

Audrey Werro ran 0.42 seconds shy of the long-standing women's 800m record at the Zurich Diamond League, a development reported on 2026-09-18.

The story of the women's 800m begins at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, when women were first allowed to compete in track and field and five events were added to the programme: the 100m, high jump, discus, 400m hurdles and, controversially at the time, 800m. German athlete Karoline Lina Radke became the first Olympic champion over 800m in Amsterdam, but the event was removed from the Games for 32 years after reports—later proven false—claimed competitors suffered extreme exhaustion and that women were too frail to race two laps; the distance was only reinstated on the Olympic programme in 1960.

Ann Brightwell (nee Packer) won Olympic gold in the 800m at the 1964 Tokyo Games in a time of two minutes 01.1 seconds, becoming the first British woman to claim track gold. Reflecting on that victory she told BBC Sport: "My husband, who was my fiance then, said to me, 'you don't realise what you've done'." She added: "I didn't give it a thought at the time… but now I realise I played a very small part in women running longer distances."

Brightwell described the resistance female athletes faced in her era, saying: "Men weren't happy about women competing in these very high profile events…we were considered too frail and too delicate. "And they took it upon themselves to make it look really bad. They were saying women were collapsing on the way round. But it was all a lie." She also recalled juggling training with work as a teacher: "Many people in my era either had to take unpaid leave or resign, or they got sacked because they were trying to juggle their sports with their career," and added, "My school was very tolerant towards what I was doing, so I was fortunate."

The progression of times continued: Brightwell's 2:01.1 was lowered by Australia's Judy Pollock to 2:01.0 in 1967, and Germany's Hildegard Falck became the first woman under two minutes in 1971. Christina Boxer-Cahill (nee Boxer) went under two minutes in the 1979 European Cup final in Turin with 1:59.05 and described breaking the barrier as special: "Records are great and medals are the best, but when you break a barrier it's a fantastic feeling." Boxer-Cahill added: "It's a bit like when Roger Bannister broke four minutes for the mile. Once he'd done it everybody did it because you see what's possible," and noted she felt fortunate to compete in an era that accepted separate men's and women's Olympic races; she also won gold for England in the 1500m at the 1982 Commonwealth Games.

From 1971 to 1983 the women's 800m world record was lowered six times, but the 1983 record stands to this day and belongs to Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova, who ran 1:53.28 in Munich. That mark has been questioned amid claims of assistance from her country's doping regime, which she "has strenuously denied," and in 2017 European Athletics proposed wiping out records set before 2005. Several Soviet satellite states, including East Germany, are named in the piece as having operated state-sponsored doping programmes during the 1980s; Boxer-Cahill recalled finishing fourth in the 1500m at the 1988 Seoul Olympics behind a Russian athlete who was later banned for doping and said: "I'd just have loved to have been on that rostrum. I wish the Eastern Bloc system hadn't been there, but that's what it was. "Politics in sport, when you're the performer, it frustrates you. But if you get too frustrated, all it's going to do is upset your own performance."

Brightwell noted the current depth of the event: "We've got not just two but several girls who are running under two minutes every time they turn out," adding, "It's stronger than it's ever been." That depth has produced recent threats to Kratochvilova's mark: Werro came within 0.42 seconds of the record at the Zurich Diamond League, and Keely Hodgkinson — the current 800m indoor world record holder — told BBC Sport: "I really do believe we can break it, but a lot of things have got to come together." Hodgkinson is one of six athletes entered in the 800m at Athlos, the all-female athletics event taking place in London, on Friday.

Kratochvilova's 43-year-old record is described in the report as "looking increasingly precarious," and former athlete Boxer-Cahill predicted: "I do think the [800m] world record will go in the next year or two, and hopefully this season, because we're on a real high, aren't we?" She added: "If it happens towards the end of the season, 2026 [would be] the year of women's 800m running." The next confirmed opportunity to see top contenders in action is the Athlos meeting in London on Friday, where Hodgkinson and other leading 800m runners will compete.