Werro reinstated after crash: European 800m final gets the field it wanted
Audrey Werro will line up in the European Athletics Championships women's 800m final on Friday after a video review overturned the consequences of a fall that left her face-down on the track in Birmingham.
Werro, the 2026 world leader over 800m, finished last in her semi-final on Thursday in 2 minutes 35.35 seconds — a time that tells you everything about how badly the race went wrong. With 120 metres to go, the back of her right foot caught the left hand of France's Anaïs Bourgoin. Werro stumbled, crashed face-down onto the curb, and her trailing legs clipped Lithuania's Gabija Galvydyte, who also fell The Guardian.
Both Werro and Galvydyte were reinstated on appeal. European Athletics officials reviewed the footage and determined Werro had been accidentally tripped — not the cause of her own downfall. The final now expands to ten runners The Guardian.
In the other semi-final, Keely Hodgkinson won in 1:57.38, with the Netherlands' Femke Broeders-Bol close behind. Britain's Jemma Reekie had already taken the first semi-final in 1:58.61 The Guardian.
What makes the final so compelling is the clash of profiles. Werro has broken 1:54 twice this season and owns the fastest 800m of 2026 European Athletics. Hodgkinson, the Olympic and European champion on home soil in Birmingham, is the crowd's clear favourite. Broeders-Bol brings a different weapon entirely: her 400m personal best of 49.17 seconds is an indoor world record, giving her the kind of raw speed that can shred a field over the final lap. By comparison, Werro's 400m best is 50.80 and Hodgkinson's is 51.14 The Guardian.
For a general reader: the 800m is two laps of the track, run at the edge of what the human body can sustain without collapsing into pure sprinting. It rewards runners who can hold their nerve and their form when the pace surges and the legs scream. A final with Werro, Hodgkinson and Broeders-Bol means three of the fastest women in the world this year, each with a different way of winning, all starting at the same gun.
The final is scheduled for Friday 14 August Olympics.com.
Werro's reinstatement means the crash that could have ended her championship instead sets up the race everyone wanted to see. Whether she can recover physically in 24 hours, after a fall that left her covered in track burns, is a question only the final will answer.
