Audrey Werro on chasing track's oldest outdoor world record: 'I have all the right keys' New York Times (Online) Liam Tharme Audrey Werro spent the summer shattering not just 800m records but her expectations. “I didn't think I'd be able to run that fast or get so close to the world record,” she says. “It was pretty incredible.” It has been more of a rocket launch than a breakout year for the 22-year-old from Switzerland, who (excluding heats) won all 10 of her outdoor 800m races. The first jaw-dropping performance came in Stockholm in June when she ran two laps of the track in 1 minute 53.98 seconds, then the third-fastest time in history and the quickest since Jarmila Kratochvílová's world record of 1:53.28, set in 1983. Kratochvílová's record is a contentious one and suspicion remains over its validity because it was set in an era rife with doping, particularly state-sponsored doping in the Soviet Union. But Kratochvílová, who grew up in a village in Czechoslovakia and was primarily a 400m runner, never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. She told the New York Times in 2017 that she had never taken banned substances. Werro's best is now within half a second of Kratochvílová's time, the longest-standing outdoor world record in track and field, after she lowered her personal best to 1:53.70 for a statement victory on home soil in Zurich in August. “To potentially break the world record, I just need more training,” she says via video call from her home in Switzerland. “I built a solid foundation. I have all the right keys, I just need to fine-tune a few details.” A “solid foundation” undersells her year. Werro won her first senior gold at the European Championships in August and successfully defended her Diamond League title in September. Add those to her three sub-1:54 performances (no other woman has multiple 1:53 runs and only two others — Kratochvílová and Nadezhda Olizarenko for the Soviet Union — have gone under 1:54 ) and her year stands tall among the greatest 800m seasons. Werro cuts her races into eight equal parts. “The main thing is to pick up the pace every 100m,” she says. “If I don't keep that in mind, I slow down without realizing.” Of those eight sections, “the fourth 100m” is the part Werro wants to improve. “In some races, I had a tendency to lose a bit of speed (at 400m).” She believes she can close races better, too. “In the final 100m, I can always add speed, even though I had much more this year.” To focus solely on the world record is to overlook Werro's rise — she has improved her personal best by four seconds since 2024. As a 20-year-old at the Paris Olympics, she failed to reach the semifinals. Only last year, after completing her studies, did the Puma athlete turn fully professional. Werro won her first Diamond League race in August 2025, and six more victories followed. That includes her favorite of the season: Stockholm. “It was a huge surprise. I had no idea how I was going to run it,” says Werro, whose outings in the indoor season proved to be a stepping stone to her record-breaking summer. “Even during the race, I was questioning what I needed to do. Every 100m, I kept telling myself I had to stay with Keely Hodgkinson and push the pace.” The victory was significance because it was her first over Hodgkinson, the Olympic and world indoor champion, in their ninth meeting. Werro tailed the pacemaker through halfway (her 400m split was 55.8s), and Hodgkinson overtook her with 350m left. But Werro had an extra gear on the final straight, and went on to set a Diamond League record. “When I crossed the finish line, I was just happy to have won,” she says. “Hodgkinson is incredibly strong and practically unbeatable for a long time. Finishing ahead of her was a huge achievement. It was only afterwards that I saw the time (1:53.98).” Her focus during the race? “Maintaining good posture, a good stride and good cadence.” It took a few days for the scale of her achievement to sink in. But she then went on to better her personal best, winning with meet-record times at the Diamond League in Paris and Zurich, and holds four of the top 10 fastest women's 800m performances. (function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})(); What, for Werro, is the difference between running 1:53 rather than 1:56? “There's no secret, you just have to go fast,” she laughs. “The most important thing is having a steady race, without too much jostling and with consistent pace. It's an advantage to have (other) fast athletes. It's easier to run at high speed in a group.” She has benefited from racing against Hodgkinson and 800m newcomer Femke Broeders-Bol, the Dutchwoman who won Olympic medals and world titles in the 400m hurdles before switching to two laps this year. Although Werro beat Broeders-Bol eight times this summer, the former hurdler finished second in six of those races and nearly caught Werro in a sprint finish at the Diamond League final in Brussels, with the winning margin just six hundredths. “That was the toughest race to win,” Werro says. “I'd run so many races. It was the end of the season and fatigue was starting to set in. There was a bit of extra pressure because it was the final, and I wanted to defend my title.” Our conversation naturally moves to the European Championships, where Werro's stunning gold-medal run of 1:54.81 broke the championship record set in 1982 . “Four years ago, I'd (been) eliminated in the heats at the European Championships in Munich, so my aim was to come back and win a medal,” she says. “Une revanche,” as she calls it in French. Revenge. What Werro did not plan for was how the semifinal unfolded. She was leading as they rounded the final bend, perfectly placed to claim the first of four qualifying spots, before suddenly tripping and crashing to the floor. “I didn't know exactly what was happening,” she says. “I felt my foot hit someone or something. At the speed we were running, it was impossible to recover.” Slow-motion replays showed that her right foot clipped the left hand of French athlete Anais Bourgoin. The contact, while subtle, was enough to disrupt Werro's gait. “For a few moments, I saw my dream of a medal slipping away, but told myself I had to get back up and finish the race — because only by finishing could I potentially make it to the final,” she says. The news she wanted took 30 minutes to arrive: the officials advanced her to the final . “It was a huge relief,” Werro says, as much for her as the Swiss team, plus her friends who had travelled to Birmingham, England, to watch. “To refocus and to forget what happened, that took a lot of work,” she says. Her only physical injuries were some scratches, but Werro did spend time with Janique Sciboz, her mental performance coach, and credits her for getting her to the start line “100 percent focused.” Race strategy was only discussed on the day, and the Swiss duly delivered on the gun-to-tape plan. She hit 400m in 56.5s, with Hodgkinson and Broeders-Bol behind her. She held both off on the final straight, dethroning double European gold medalist Hodgkinson at her home championships. “I've always been a runner who prefers leading,” Werro says. “I feel freer because I'm the one controlling the race. I can run the way I want.” Those tactics are a result of trial and error. Werro missed out on European and world indoor medals last March, tripping in the continental final and fading to fourth on the global stage. It is why she calls 2025 “a year of learning.” The Werro you see on the track — the one with the lion-roar celebration — is different to the one away from it. “I'm fairly calm, somewhat reserved,” she says. “Athletics has helped me discover who I am and become more extroverted.” She spent this off-season solo travelling for two weeks around Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Between races in the summer, she made an effort to return home to the medieval town of Fribourg in western Switzerland. Werro still trains with her childhood club, CA Belfaux, which is made up of sprint, multi-event and middle-distance groups. “I've always been very attached to my family, my region, and everything familiar to me. It would be hard for me to leave all that,” she says. The European champion was raised on a rich sporting diet and her idols growing up were sprinters Sarah Atcho-Jaquier and Mujinga Kambundji. She was part of what she calls a “typically Swiss” multisport club. “I played soccer, basketball and volleyball. We tried a bit of everything. Then I started athletics, because a primary school teacher saw I had talent for running,” she says. She is helping lead a middle-distance revolution in Switzerland. Four of their women broke two minutes in the 800m this season, a time threshold considered to be world-class. Warm-weather camps in South Africa next month and in Portugal in January are to be Werro's foundation for 2027, which features two championships: European indoors in March and the World Championships in mid-September. The latter presents Werro with an opportunity to become the first Swiss 800m world champion since André Bucher in 2001. “I don't know what next year holds, but I feel confident,” Werro says. “I hope the momentum continues. I'd like to keep running faster.”