Masai Russell and Alison Dos Santos turned a Diamond League night in Zurich into a rare record-breaking double on Thursday, each setting a world record in front of a sell-out crowd. Russell ran 12.09 seconds in the 100m hurdles, while Dos Santos stopped the clock at 45.80 in the 400m hurdles.
The numbers explain why the meet drew so much attention. Russell took 0.03sec off Tobi Amusan’s mark of 12.12, which had stood since the Eugene world championships in 2022. Dos Santos was 0.14sec faster than Karsten Warholm’s 45.94, the standard Warholm set in the final of the Tokyo Olympics. Each athlete received a cheque for $80,000, a reward for a night that moved the event records forward in one session.
Zurich was the kind of stage that can make fast races look inevitable. The weather was still and balmy, and The Letzigrund Stadium was packed with 25,000 spectators, but calm conditions alone do not produce two world records. The more telling detail was the quality across the card: Audrey Werro ran 1:53.70 in the women’s 800m, the third fastest time ever in the event and only 0.42sec off Jarmila Kratochvilova’s 1:53.28, a mark from Munich in 1983.
Even the field event drama had a catch in it. Mondo Duplantis won the pole vault with 6.25m and Emmanouil Karalis cleared a personal best of 6.20m, the first time in vaulting history that two athletes had gone beyond that height. Both then tried 6.32m, a possible world record, and both came up short. Karalis called it “nuts”; Duplantis still took the win, but the bar stayed where it was.
That is what made the night feel bigger than a pair of isolated marks. Zurich delivered a full meeting in which the pace was fast enough to threaten records across disciplines, and the standout for the home crowd was Werro, who ran into history and then let the moment speak for itself: “It was crazy, I am very proud. Thank you everybody!”
