Brazil's Alison dos Santos and American Masai Russell set world records in two hurdles events at the Weltklasse Zurich Diamond League meeting on Thursday, delivering the most significant results of an exceptional night at Letzigrund Stadium. Dos Santos won the men's 400-meter hurdles in 45.80 seconds, while Russell completed the women's 100-meter hurdles in 12.09 seconds. World Athletics reported both marks as world records, subject to the sport's standard ratification process.
Dos Santos lowered the 45.94 mark that Norway's Karsten Warholm established at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Running in lane six, the 26-year-old Brazilian caught Warholm by the halfway point and maintained his strength through the final hurdles. The improvement of 0.14 seconds made Dos Santos the second man to break 46 seconds in the event and gave Brazil its first athletics world record since marathon runner Ronaldo da Costa in 1998, according to El País.
Russell followed less than 40 minutes later and erased Nigerian Tobi Amusan's four-year-old record of 12.12 seconds. With the wind measured at 0.0 meters per second, the 2024 Olympic champion finished ahead of Amusan, who ran a season best of 12.23, and Dutch European champion Nadine Visser, who placed third in 12.34. The Diamond League said Russell had missed the record by only 0.02 seconds in Xiamen in May and arrived in Zurich on an unbeaten run in her specialist event.
The meeting produced several other elite performances. Swiss runner Audrey Werro won the women's 800 meters in 1:53.70, a Diamond League, meeting and national record that left her 0.42 seconds outside the long-standing world record. Sweden's Mondo Duplantis cleared 6.25 meters to win the men's pole vault after Greece's Emmanouil Karalis achieved a personal best of 6.20, and both then attempted 6.32 without success.
Conditions at Letzigrund were warm, humid and almost windless, while about 25,000 spectators attended, according to event organizers. Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia won the women's 100 meters in a national-record 10.70, edging Melissa Jefferson-Wooden by five thousandths of a second, and Anna Cockrell took the women's 400-meter hurdles in a world-leading meeting record of 52.13 after Emma Zapletalova faltered at the ninth hurdle.
The two records reshape the benchmarks in events that have featured intense competition in recent seasons. Dos Santos displaced a mark produced in one of the most celebrated Olympic races, while Russell became the first woman officially reported under 12.10 seconds for the sprint hurdles. World Athletics must now complete its usual technical checks before ratification, but Zurich's results immediately establish new targets as athletes approach the closing stages of the Diamond League season.
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