Key facts
- Women’s 800m world record: 1:53.28, set by Jarmila Kratochvilova (Czechoslovakia) in Munich in 1983 — standing for 43 years
- Closest approach: Audrey Werro (Switzerland) ran 1:53.80 in June this year, more than half a second off the record
- Keely Hodgkinson broke the indoor 800m world record in February at 1:54.87, a mark that had stood since 2002
- Hodgkinson holds the sixth-fastest outdoor 800m time in history and is competing at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham
- Femke Broeders-Bol (Netherlands) ran 1:55.60 at the Paris Diamond League in June despite limited 800m experience
- European Athletics proposed scrapping pre-2005 records in 2017; the proposal was never carried out
The women’s 800m world record is the oldest standing mark in athletics. Jarmila Kratochvilova of Czechoslovakia ran 1 minute 53.28 seconds in Munich in 1983, and no one has come close to matching it since, despite improvements in shoe technology, nutrition and recovery science. The question of whether the record could finally fall has resurfaced with Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson, currently one of the top three middle-distance runners in the world, competing at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham this week, according to BBC Sport.
The record and questions around it
Kratochvilova set her time at age 32, finishing more than seven seconds ahead of runner-up Jolanta Januchta of Poland. According to BBC Sport, there have long been claims that Kratochvilova’s run was aided by a systematic doping program in Czechoslovakia at the time, allegations she has strenuously denied. The report also notes that Marita Koch of East Germany, who set the women’s 400m world record in 1985, competed for a country known to have systematically doped its athletes, though Koch never failed a drugs test and has maintained she did nothing wrong. In 2017, European Athletics proposed erasing records set before 2005 — the year World Athletics began storing blood and urine samples — but the plan was never implemented.
How close athletes have come
For 25 years after 1983, no athlete ran within a second of Kratochvilova’s mark. The closest anyone has ever gotten is Switzerland’s Audrey Werro, who ran 1:53.80 in June this year — still more than half a second slower than the record. Werro has dipped under 1:54 twice in 2025. Hodgkinson broke the indoor 800m world record in February with a time of 1:54.87, surpassing a mark that had stood since 2002. The Netherlands’ Femke Broeders-Bol, a relative newcomer to the 800m after switching from the 400m hurdles, ran 1:55.60 at the Paris Diamond League meeting in June with limited experience in the event. Hodgkinson holds the sixth-fastest outdoor 800m time in history, per BBC Sport.
What people close to the sport are saying
Jenny Meadows, a former British runner and Hodgkinson’s coach, told BBC Sport that Kratochvilova’s 1:53.28 remains an astonishing time, saying that even as a global medalist herself she could not comprehend a woman running that fast. Jessica Ennis-Hill, the London 2012 Olympic heptathlon champion, said the current crop of 800m runners are pushing each other to increasingly fast times and that the overall level of the event has risen sharply over the past two years. Sports scientists cited in the report also point to major advances in shoe technology as a factor helping athletes run faster than in previous eras.
Sources
Featured photo: Erik van Leeuwen, attribution: Erik van Leeuwen (bron: Wikipedia). via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)