Issue 419
Audrey Werro extends her unbeaten streak in the 800m
The women’s 800m is one of the best shows in track & field right now, and that’s thanks in large part to the fact that Switzerland’s Audrey Werro and the Netherlands’ Femke Broeders-Bol have raced frequently this season, and they aren’t afraid to go head to head.
They’ve lined up against each other six times, with four of those matchups in the last three weeks. In some ways, the rivalry is one-sided, because Werro hasn’t lost to anyone in the 800m this season (not including her fall in the semifinals at the European Championships). But Broeders-Bol, a world champion in the 400m hurdles, is progressing quickly.
When they first raced, on June 16, Werro beat Broeders-Bol with room to spare, 1:54.45 to 1:57.13. But in two of their last three races, Werro has won by less than a tenth of a second. And Saturday’s showdown, at the Diamond League final in Brussels, Belgium, was their closest race yet. Werro led at the top of the homestretch, but Broeders-Bol was able to close the gap ever so slightly and finished just 0.06 seconds back, 1:54.75 to 1:54.81.
Barring disaster in the semifinals, we’ll get to see one more round of this matchup at the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship on Saturday. And they’ll be joined by Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson, who has recovered from a “minor niggle.”
Ethiopia’s Saida Tsehaye, 18, crossed the finish line in third place, running 1:57.57, but she was disqualified for a lane infringement. Everyone else in the field might as well have been in a different race. Addy Wiley, the lone American in the field, finished sixth in 2:01.29.
Werro went into this season with a personal best of 1:55.91, but she’s been on a new level this spring. Between the indoor and outdoor seasons, including prelims, she has raced 21 800s. What has stood out the most is her consistency. Outdoors, excluding preliminary rounds, she has raced the 800m nine times, and six of those have been sub-1:55 performances.
Broeders-Bol has PRed in three out of her last four races, and she seems to gradually be figuring out how to manage her energy over the course of the race. Earlier in the season, just being a contender seemed like a significant step for her. But now she’s in the position to win. After Saturday’s race, she couldn’t help but want more.
“In all honesty, it feels a little bit frustrating,” she told reporters. “But I’m like 99 percent happy, one percent frustrated when you get that close.”
Broeders-Bol’s coach, Laurent Meuwly, was on The Citius Mag Podcast last week (link includes a transcript), where he explained some of her training and where she has room to grow. The previous week, she told reporters that her long run pace is 5:30/K (8:51/mile) and her threshold pace is 4:20/K (6:58/mile) on a good day. At which point a lot of recreational distance runners thought, “I can do that!” But almost none of them can keep up with her for 400 meters.
Training for the 800m varies significantly, depending on whether an athlete is coming at the event from the sprint or middle-distance side. (That’s how, despite overlapping at Harvard, 800m standouts Victoria Bossong and Sophia Gorriaran had different coaches and didn’t train together.) When it comes to speed, Broeders-Bol is among the world’s best, and if she and Meuwly can figure out how to improve her endurance without sacrificing her speed, she’s going to be even more dangerous in this event.
“We’ve been speaking a lot about the world record,” Meuwly told Citius Mag. “...But if I look at the road to LA, I think we are going to be speaking more about 1:52 times than about who broke the world record.” The world record, set in 1983, is 1:53.28, and Werro has run 1:53.70 this season. (Detailed 800m results | All results | 800m highlights)
Klaudia Kazimierska runs a breakthrough race to win the 1500m title
Poland’s Klaudia Kazimierska picked a good day to have a good day. Two days after her 25th birthday, the University of Oregon graduate used a 59.25-second final lap to move from seventh place to first in the 1500m at the Diamond League final. She won in a world-leading 3:54.05, and she took 1.54 seconds off of the Polish record she set two weeks earlier. In the past two weeks, she has lowered her 1500m personal best by 3.9 seconds.
In retrospect, Kazimierska’s tactic of going to the back of the race and running on the rail looked wise, but she said afterward that she wasn’t thrilled with her positioning. By sitting in the back, running the shortest distance, and not wasting energy trying to get into a good position, she had a lot left on the final lap.
Because both the women’s 800m and 1500m were considered “Diamond+ Disciplines,” Werro and Kazimierska earned $60,000 apiece for their wins.
Kenya’s Dorcus Ewoi also closed well and nipped Australia’s Jessica Hull at the line, 3:54.72 to 3:54.73. That hundredth of a second cost Hull $11,000 as Ewoi earned $20,000 and Hull earned $9,000. Ewoi shaved 0.20 seconds off of the personal best that she set last summer when she earned a surprise silver medal at last summer’s world championships. Until then, she was unable to get into Diamond League meets, but this year, she has firmly established herself as one of the world’s best.
Looking and feeling a little tired, Great Britain’s Georgia Hunter Bell, one of the pre-race favorites, took fourth in 3:56.40. For athletes who ran both the Commonwealth Games and the European Championships, it’s been a long season.
After having an off day at the Silesia Diamond League meet two weeks earlier, Nikki Hiltz had a much better race in Brussels, finishing fifth in a season’s best of 3:56.87. And because you don’t often see this in the women’s middle-distance and distance events, it’s worth noting that the top five runners in this race all competed in the NCAA, with three of them having University of Oregon ties.
Emily Mackay didn’t have the day she would have liked, but she still finished eighth in 3:57.98.
Kazimierska finished her NCAA career in the spring of 2025, and her highest NCAA finish came a year earlier, when she finished third in the 1500m in 2024. After being coached by Shalane Flanagan during college, Jerry Schumacher has joined her team of coaches as a pro. “Before I left Eugene, he was saying that he has never seen an athlete do the things that I do in training,” she said. “And I know that he coached amazing athletes.” (Detailed 1500m results)
Faith Cherotich ends her season on a high note
Because the steeplechase won’t be contested at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship, Friday’s Diamond League final took on more significance, as the season-ending race for the event. No one athlete had dominated the event this season. In the six Diamond League races leading up, Kenya’s Faith Cherotich and Uganda’s Peruth Chemutai had earned two wins each, while Bahrain’s Winfred Yavi and Tunisia’s Marwa Bouzayani had each earned one.
On Friday, they all faced off, and the four Diamond League champions, as well as Kenya’s Doris Lemngole, quickly separated themselves from the rest of the field as they hit 1K in 2:55.2 and 2K in 5:58.0. With 500m to go, Yavi made a push and only Cherotich went with her. Cherotich had the stronger finish, using a 65.71-second final lap to win in a meet record of 8:51.61. Lemngole closed nearly as quickly as Cherotich, but because she had let a small gap form, she was unable to catch Cherotich in time. But she ran 8:52.86 and took another three seconds off of her personal best.
Yavi took third (8:53.54), Bouzayani was fourth (8:57.02), and Chemutai took fifth (8:59.77).
While many of the top American runners did not make it this deep into the season, or aren’t peaking now, Lexy Halladay-Lowry has timed things just right. It may not have been entirely intentional—she was dealing with a calf injury earlier in the season—but she ran a strong race and took sixth in a three-second personal best of 9:05.36, which moves her to fourth on the U.S. all-time list. Gabbi Jennings finished eighth in 9:14.05.
Cherotich, who is still only 22, is the reigning world champion, so she will be the athlete to beat next year. And I’ve been really impressed by how well Lemngole, 24, has finished out the year. At the NCAA Championships in June, she appeared to win the 5,000m, which would have been her sixth NCAA title for Alabama, but then she was disqualified for taking too many steps over the inside line.
From afar, her transition to professional running has appeared seamless, and she closed her season with two PRs. Her 8:52.86 makes her the sixth-fastest woman of all time. (Detailed steeplechase results)
Freweyni Hailu kicks to a 5,000m win
Ethiopia’s Freweyni Hailu is a two-time world indoor champion, and she had won seven races on the Diamond League circuit over the past five years, but on Friday, she earned her first win in a Diamond League final, taking the 5,000m in 14:35.20.
As many of these races go, no one really wanted to keep the pace going. The Netherlands’ Maureen Koster did the best job by bridging the gap to the pacer early on and keeping the race from being a relative jog.
But with one lap to go, almost everyone in the field was still in contention. Hailu closed with a 59.6-second 400m and it was an Ethiopian sweep as Likina Amebaw took second (14:36.31) and Senayet Getachew was third (14:37.09). Everyone who finished did so within a 5.42-second span.
The steeplechase and 5,000m were Diamond Disciplines (as opposed to Diamond+), so Cherotich and Hailu earned $30,000 for their wins, and the runners up earned $12,000.
The inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championships—a season-ending meet in the years where there’s no World Championships—will take place in Budapest beginning this Friday. (All three days of the meet will air on Peacock.)
At this point, I’m not entirely sold on the idea of having the Diamond League final and the World Athletics Ultimate Championship on back-to-back weekends, especially because many of the fields will be similar. I like that the athletes now have more opportunities to earn prize money, and there will be no pacers in Budapest, so the races could play out differently. World Athletics seems determined to deliver an event that feels different from a standard track meet. I’ll be curious to see if they can pull that off and I hope that the execution wins me over. (Detailed 5,000m results)
Other News and Links
This post-race video is a week old, but I was interested to hear Gracie Morris say that she left Puma Elite because it had turned into more of a marathon group and it wasn’t a good fit for her personality-wise. She’s now part of the Flagstaff Swoosh TC hub, and she wanted to make the adjustment, which includes being at altitude full-time, during a year without an outdoor global championship. She said that her training has been really different—she’s doing double-threshold now—and she’s looking forward to seeing it pay off next year.
Australia’s Hayley Kitching has signed with Brooks and will join the Seattle-based Brooks Beasts. A standout runner for Penn State, Kitching was the NCAA outdoor runner-up in the 800m with a PR of 1:57.65, and she finished fifth at the World Indoor Championships in March.
Parker Valby announced that her 2026 track season is over. She ended up racing only three times this season, but she took a step forward, running two 5,000m PRs and taking third in the 5,000m at USAs.
Dani Jones said her season is over after she dealt with injuries for much of the year.
It took me weeks to get around to reading this article about the struggles of making it as a professional track & field athlete when you aren’t one of the world’s best. I think the challenges vary quite a bit from one country to the next and depending on one’s event, but the article raises a lot of good points. And I appreciated the quote, “You’re better off being world class at social media and a bit of a crap athlete than being a world-class athlete and crap [at] social media.” I still think, though, that the best athletes can get away with being not so great at social media or mostly ignoring it altogether. I wish that was a viable option for everyone.
Somewhat related, the USATF Foundation announced its grant winners last week. The grants, ranging from $10,000 to $40,000, help athletes remain in the sport.
With her win at the Sydney Marathon, Switzerland’s Manuela Schär became the first person to win all eight of the World Marathon Majors.
4:07 1500m runner Jenn Randall had her first child.
Thanks to the reader who shared this with me: At the Sydney Marathon, Paralympic standout Michael Roeger of Australia had trouble grabbing his drinks, because all of the aid stations were placed on the right side of the course and he was born without the lower half of his right arm. But Kenya’s Irine Cheptai helped him out by sharing some of her bottles.
In this YouTube video, Makenna Myler discusses the emotions of finding out she was pregnant while training for the LA Marathon. Six weeks into her pregnancy, she finished ninth at the race in 2:35:03.
Tara Davis-Woodhall shared that she was involved in a head-on collision on her way to practice, and she suffered a concussion and other injuries. Her post includes a video of the accident, and she said that she was unsure if she would be able to compete this weekend as a result.
Canadian skyrunner Kalie McCrystal, who was preparing to go after a FKT on the Matterhorn, was last seen on Tuesday, September 1, descending the Italian side of the mountain. According to Athletics Canada, her family is working with mountain rescue services and search operations are ongoing.
Margaret Fleming reports that though Athlos has canceled their October 2 meet in New York City, they are still required to pay a stadium deposit of $75,000 to the Randall’s Island Park Alliance. A spokesperson for Athlos told her that they will be honoring all of their contractual obligations.
I was curious what kind of bump in followers one gets with a run like Lauren Gregory’s at OCC. I probably didn’t look early enough, but right after the race, she was at 16.2K Instagram followers, and now (on Sunday) she’s at 24.2K.
Ethiopia’s Tiruye Mesfin, who ran a 2:18:35 marathon at age 22 and a 1:06:31 half marathon at 20, has been banned for three years by the Athletics Integrity Unit due to abnormalities in her athlete biological passport. She was given a four-year ban but it was reduced by one year due to her early admission and acceptance of the ban. But as a result, Mesfin, now 23, could be back to professional running by age 26. (The full decision is here.)
Additional Results
At the Volksbank Trier Eifel Flutichtmeeting in Germany, Australia’s Georgia Griffith won the 1500m in 4:01.74, finishing just ahead of Gracie Hyde, who had a huge breakthrough, PRing by 4.19 seconds and running 4:01.93. Lindsey Butler also had a big day, PRing by 3.72 seconds and running 4:02.29 for third. But Elise Stearns had the biggest day of all, running 4:04.45—a 16-second personal best—for fourth. (She doesn’t race the distance often.) Jamaica’s Kelly-Ann Beckford won the 800m in 1:59.04. (Results)
Scotland’s Jemma Reekie won the New Balance Kö Meile, a road mile, in a European record of 4:23.25. Gracie Hyde (4:26.10) and Gracie Morris (4:27.34) took second and third. (Results) Kenya’s Celestine Biwot Jepkosgei won the accompanying 5K in 15:17.25, and Elise Stearns took second in 15:24.30. (Results)
Bahrain’s Nelly Jepkosgei won the 1500m at the Serbia Athletics Meeting, running 4:04.82. There was a strong U.S. presence in the race with Margot Appleton taking third (4:06.43), Gracie Morris sixth (4:07.75), Juliette Whittaker 10th (4:11.51), and Teagan Schein-Becker 11th (4:15.57). (Results)
Lindsey Butler won the Monument Mile Classic, a track race, in 4:26.60. (Results)
Ethiopia’s Chaltu Dida Diriba won the Birell 10K Night Race in Prague, running 30:04. (Results)
Returning from a broken toe, Scotland’s Eilish McColgan won Sunday’s Big Half in 1:10:54. (Results)
I love the start of cross country season, as athletes begin to see the hard work they put in over the summer pay off. Most of the top teams and athletes tend to lay low at the start of the season, but it was nice to see Jane Hedengren race for BYU. She dominated, running 15:08 for three miles at altitude at the Utah Valley Invitational and winning by more than 30 seconds. (Results)
Indiana University first year Katy Zang dominated the Sam Bell Invitational, winning the 4K race by 54 seconds and running 12:36. And I appreciated her bow at the end. (Results)
Led by Ava Mitchell, who ran 14:41.9 for 2.5 miles at altitude, NAU dominated the George Kyte Classic, but it was good to see 42-year-old Steph Bruce in there finishing fifth and holding her own against the college kids. (Results)
Additional Podcasts
Listening to Liza Rickey, who coaches cross country and track & field at Issaquah High School in Washington, on The Appetite podcast made me want to either run for her team or become her assistant coach. I love how she’s taking all of the lessons she’s learned along the way to build a successful program that makes athletes’ health the priority. If you coach, or even if you don’t, this episode is a great listen.
I enjoyed getting a Jess McClain update on Out & Back.
And it was good to learn more about Hannah Ballowe, who is a Ph.D. student and REDs researcher at NC State, as well as a 2:00.56 800m runner, on The Lane 9 Podcast.
More Episodes: Emma Grace Hurley on Fingerprints on Medals | 19-year-old British Olympian Phoebe Gill on Podium Athletics | Canada’s Jadyn Keeler on Inspired Soles (she now has a YouTube channel and she’s a natural at talking to the camera) | Musician Margaret Glaspy on The Trailhead | TeeTee Terry on Hurdle
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I hope you all have the best week possible.
Alison