Alison dos Santos and Masai Russell break hurdles world records in Zurich

Alison dos Santos and Masai Russell broke hurdles world records only 75 minutes apart at the Diamond League meeting in Zurich, turning one night of racing into a historic double. Both champions defeated the athletes who held the previous records, with those former record-holders finishing second.

Dos Santos takes down Warholm’s 400m mark

Brazil’s Dos Santos ran 45.80 seconds in the men’s 400m hurdles, improving Karsten Warholm’s 2021 world record of 45.94. The 26-year-old entered the meeting undefeated this season, but his previous personal best of 46.29 had stood for four years.

Dos Santos separated from the field after the final hurdle and drove through the finish while Warholm came home a distant second. The performance also built on the Brazilian’s silver medal from the 2025 world championships and confirmed his control of the event this season.

Russell answers with 12.09

Seventy-five minutes later, American Olympic champion Masai Russell clocked 12.09 in the women’s 100m hurdles. Her run lowered Tobi Amusan’s 12.12 world record, a mark Russell had approached repeatedly: she had finished within one tenth of it five times across the previous two seasons.

Amusan finished second and watched the record fall from the lane beside the new holder. Russell celebrated by raising a finger to her lips as the capacity crowd of about 25,000 reacted to the second global mark of the evening.

The same meeting nearly produced another landmark in the women’s 800m. Switzerland’s Audrey Werro ran 1:53.70, the third-fastest time in history and only 0.42 seconds behind Jarmila Kratochvilova’s 43-year-old world record.

World records in both the men’s 400m hurdles and women’s 100m hurdles on one program underline the depth of the current hurdles generation. In Zurich, the moment was made sharper by the direct handover: Warholm and Amusan were not watching from afar but racing as their standards were surpassed.