Audrey Werro Beat Keely Hodgkinson in Budapest to Close an Unbeaten Outdoor Season

Audrey Werro has not lost an outdoor 800m all year, and nobody in Budapest on Saturday night got close enough to change that. The 22-year-old Swiss runner went to the front early in the World Athletics Ultimate Championship final, came through 400m in 57.83, and was well clear of Keely Hodgkinson and Femke Broeders-Bol at the line, winning in 1:55.88.

Hodgkinson, the Olympic champion, ran Broeders-Bol down over the last 100m but never got to Werro, finishing 0.38 seconds behind in 1:56.26. Broeders-Bol was third in 1:56.74, and Addison Wiley of the United States took fourth in a season’s best 1:57.54. It was the same three women, in the same order, as the European final in Birmingham on Aug. 14, where Werro ran a championship record of 1:54.81.

The win paid $150,000, the standard first prize at the inaugural Ultimate Championship, which gives $75,000 for second, $40,000 for third. Jakob Ingebrigtsen took home the same amount for the men’s 5,000m on an opening night that started a three-day meet finishing Sunday.

The Fastest 800m Runner in 43 Years

In Stockholm on June 7, Werro ran 1:53.98 and beat Hodgkinson, becoming the first woman under 1:54 since 1983. She improved to 1:53.80 in Paris at the end of the month, then to 1:53.70 in Zurich on Aug. 27, which is the third-fastest 800m anybody has run. Four of the 10 quickest performances in the event’s history belong to Werro, and all four came this summer.

Only two women have gone faster, both of them before she was born. Nadezhda Olizarenko ran 1:53.43 in 1980, and Jarmila Kratochvilova ran 1:53.28 in Munich in July 1983, a mark that is still the oldest individual world record on the books in running. Werro has been within 0.42 seconds of it.

The unbeaten record is an outdoor one. Hodgkinson beat her twice indoors, first in Liévin in February, where the Briton lowered the world indoor record to 1:54.87 and Werro, who went with her early, faded to 1:58.38, and again in the world indoor final in March, where Werro took silver.

Hodgkinson’s Interrupted Summer

Hodgkinson has raced sparingly since Birmingham. She pulled out of the Zurich Diamond League in late August, saying her body was not ready to go again after the European Championships, and sat out the Diamond League final in Brussels as well. Her semi-final in Budapest on Friday, won in 1:57.57, came four weeks to the day after the European final.

“I wanted to win and it ended up pretty close,” Hodgkinson told World Athletics. “These are some amazing women, and we all push each other.”

Werro’s own summary of the year was shorter. “I think I have won every race I’ve had this year during the outdoor season,” she said. “It is really crazy but, at the same time, it is something I have worked for and now I am getting the result.”

Broeders-Bol, a two-time world champion in the 400m hurdles who only moved to the 800m this season, ran 1:54.71 in Zurich and is already the ninth-fastest woman in history at the distance. “My season is done and now I can say that I really love this event,” she said.