Werro targets 43-year-old 800m world record ahead of Zurich Diamond League
Audrey Werro said on the eve of Thursday evening's Diamond League meeting in Zurich that she believes Jarmila Kratochvilova's 43-year-old 800m world record will fall. The 22-year-old European 800m champion ran 1:53.80 in Paris in June, moving to within half a second of Kratochvilova's time.
Jarmila Kratochvilova set the benchmark of 1:53.28 in 1983 while representing the then Czechoslovakia; a systematic doping programme in the country during her career has been reported, although Kratochvilova never failed a doping test and has denied cheating. Werro beat Britain's Keely Hodgkinson to gold at the European Championships in Birmingham earlier this month, upsetting home hopes in that race. Werro's Paris mark placed her third on the event's all-time list.
"Things have happened really fast," Werro said on the eve of the Zurich meeting. "I was not prepared for a world record this year. I just want to focus on running fast and winning some races and I think with this mentality the world record will fall one day. But I don't know when."
Werro has improved her personal best in each of her last eight seasons and this year has produced three of the 10 fastest times in history. "The biggest difference this year was that I finished university one year ago," she added. "Now I'm just focused on athletics and I just have more time for the competition, the training, the recovery, everything."
She also spoke of work on the psychological side: "I have worked a lot more in the mentality part over the past two years and you are seeing the result now." Werro's trademark celebration, in which she mimics outstretched claws, stems from her father's advice to channel the spirit of a lion on the track after he judged her too timid in childhood races.
Keely Hodgkinson has pulled out of the Zurich meeting, the final Diamond League outing before the series final in Brussels on 4-5 September. Femke Broeders-Bol of the Netherlands will line up alongside Werro; Broeders-Bol only stepped up to the two-lap distance this season after winning the 400m hurdles world title in Tokyo in 2025 and she finished eight hundredths of a second behind Werro in Lausanne last week.
"I didn't expect to be this fast already – to run a national record already – so it has been very nice to surprise myself with my level," Broeders-Bol said. Georgia Hunter-Bell, who won world 800m silver last year and has claimed national and Commonwealth titles over the distance this season, will be Britain's sole representative in the Zurich race, which begins at 20:41 BST.
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