Werro beats Hodgkinson and Bol to win 800m Ultimate title
Audrey Werro held off Keely Hodgkinson and Femke Broeders-Bol to win the women's 800m final and become Ultimate Champion.
The Swiss runner beat Britain's Hodgkinson and the Netherlands' Broeders-Bol in Budapest to take the new global title, capping a season in which she has repeatedly beaten both rivals head to head BBC.
Hodgkinson, the Olympic champion, had come through her semi-final to reach the decider, while Broeders-Bol arrived as the other form runner in the field. Werro had the answer for both. She controlled the race from the front and would not be passed down the home straight.
She entered the World Athletics Ultimate Championship as the world leader — the fastest woman in the world this year — and unbeaten outdoors in 2026 World Athletics. That record was no accident. All season she has won the big 800m races when it mattered.
In Birmingham she had already beaten Hodgkinson and Broeders-Bol to win the European 800m title World Athletics. Then in the Diamond League Final she ran 1:54.75, a meeting record, to beat Broeders-Bol by just 0.06 seconds The Guardian.
The clock tells the rest of the story. Werro ran 1:53.98 in Lausanne to move to third on the women's 800m all-time list World Athletics. In that race Hodgkinson ran a personal best and still could not catch her. Werro later lowered her own mark to 1:53.70 Yahoo Sports.
That left only one target. The women's outdoor world record stands at 1 minute 53.28 seconds BBC, and Werro made an open bid for it in August. She fell short that night, but she keeps moving closer.
What makes this stand out is the repetition. One win can be tactics or luck. Werro keeps winning the same match-up, against an Olympic champion and a championship medallist, on different tracks and in different months. You can hear it in the breathing in the last 100m. She does not fade.
