When Audrey Werro crossed the finish line in Zürich in 1:53.70, she did more than break her own Swiss record. The 22-year-old produced the third-fastest women’s 800m time in history. In fact, this season Werro has remained unbeaten in the 800m outdoors, posting the world-leading time while collecting the European title, the Diamond League Final crown and the World Athletics Ultimate Championship gold, where she beat Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson. Yet with all that success behind her, the Swiss star is refusing to let her winning streak convince her that she cannot be beaten.

“The most important thing this year in order to stay the best was to keep in my mind that one day, I will get beaten,” Werro told World Athletics. “I need to accept that. No one is invincible, and if I keep that in my mind, I’m just more free to run like I want to.” For Werro, that mindset has been just as important as what she has done on the track, which has been hard to ignore.

Her first major statement came in Stockholm in June, where she clocked 1:53.98. The performance made her only the third woman in history to break 1:54 in the 800m. She also finished ahead of Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson, who ran a British record of 1:54.33 in second. Werro did not finish there. Just three weeks later in Paris, she lowered her time to 1:53.80, becoming the first woman to record multiple sub-1:54 performances. Then came Zürich on August 27, where she went even faster with 1:53.70.

Werro has also recorded three of the five fastest women’s 800m times in history this year. The victories have followed the fast times. At the European Championships in Birmingham, Werro won gold in 1:54.81 after being reinstated for the final following a fall in her semifinal. Hodgkinson finished second in 1:55.01. Werro then edged Femke Broeders-Bol by just 0.06 seconds in the Diamond League Final in Brussels before adding another major victory at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest. She won there in 1:55.88, with Hodgkinson second in 1:56.26 and Broeders-Bol third in 1:56.74.

Before the 2026 season even began, Audrey Werro already knew what she wanted. The Swiss 800m runner had set herself three goals: win a medal at the European Championships, take the Diamond League Final title and improve her national record of 1:55.91. By the end of the season, she had checked every box and then gone far beyond them. 

Now, after a season that changed the course of her career, Werro is stepping away from training for four weeks. She will use the break to rest before starting her preparations for 2027. But while her 2026 campaign may now look almost perfect, getting to this point wasn’t easy-peasy.

The struggles behind Werro’s rise

The signs of Werro’s talent had been there for a long time. In 2021, she won the European U20 800m title, and a year later she took World U20 silver. But when she started making the move into senior athletics in 2023, she quickly learned that having the talent was only part of the challenge. Werro had always been comfortable running at the front. It allowed her to control the pace and race on her own terms. That approach had worked brilliantly at junior level but not in senior championships.

At the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul in 2023, Werro made the 800m final at just 19. She briefly moved into third, but two runners passed her before the finish, and she ended up fifth just 0.06 seconds away from bronze. Then, a year later, she was forced to deal with something she could not control.

Werro suffered a muscle tear in the back of her thigh during her preparation for the 2024 outdoor season. The injury kept her out of the European Championships in Rome, and although she returned to training, she and her team decided not to take unnecessary risks with the Paris Olympics approaching. She eventually made her Olympic debut in Paris, but there was still a gap between being a promising young athlete and becoming a consistent title contender.

That gap became even more obvious in early 2025. At the European Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn, Werro entered the 800m as one of the athletes expected to challenge for the title. Instead, her race ended with a fall around 100m from the finish as she tried to move through the field. Those difficult moments did not stop her progress. In fact, they became part of the process that eventually produced the Werro we saw in 2026.

There was another change taking place away from the track, too. For years, Werro had been trying to fit elite athletics around her education. She studied at Collège Sainte-Croix, also known as Kollegium Gambach, in Fribourg, and completed her Swiss maturité in 2025. She had even split her final year so she could continue managing her athletics commitments. Once her studies were finished, Werro could finally give athletics her full attention. That made her a star in 2026.