Two World Records in 40 Minutes: How Alison dos Santos and Masai Russell Rewrote Hurdling in Zurich
First Alison dos Santos ran the fastest 400 metres hurdles ever seen, taking down Karsten Warholm’s legendary Tokyo record. Thirty-seven minutes later Masai Russell produced a technically brilliant, windless 12.09 to remove Tobi Amusan from the top of the 100m hurdles record book. This was not merely a great Diamond League meeting. For hurdlers, it was a night the sport will remember.
Some athletics meetings produce great races.
Very occasionally, a meeting changes the record book twice before the crowd has even had time to understand what it has just witnessed.
That is what happened in Zürich.
At 26 years old, Brazil’s Alison dos Santos lined up against the man whose 45.94 at the Tokyo Olympics had become one of the defining performances of modern athletics: Karsten Warholm.
Dos Santos did not edge the record.
He ran 45.80.
Fourteen hundredths faster than Warholm’s 45.94.
Then, less than 40 minutes later, Olympic champion Masai Russell faced the woman whose name had occupied the 100m hurdles world-record line since Eugene 2022, Tobi Amusan.
Russell ran 12.09.
There was no tailwind.
The reading was 0.0 m/s.
Two different hurdle races. Two completely different physiological problems. Two world records on the same track, on the same evening.
Alison dos Santos 🇧🇷
Previous WR: Karsten Warholm — 45.94Improvement: 0.14 seconds
Masai Russell 🇺🇸
Previous WR: Tobi Amusan — 12.12Wind: 0.0 m/s
*Both performances remain subject to the usual World Athletics ratification procedure.
Part I — Alison dos Santos Runs 45.80 and Finally Breaks the Tokyo Record
To understand how enormous 45.80 is, we have to go back five years.
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Karsten Warholm and Rai Benjamin produced one of the most celebrated races in track and field history.
Warholm ran 45.94.
Benjamin ran 46.17.
Dos Santos, still only 21, took bronze in 46.72.
Warholm’s mark did not look like a normal world record. It had lowered his previous record by 0.76 seconds and suddenly made sub-46-second hurdling real.
For five years, nobody went faster.
Then the same man whose breakthrough had occurred in that Tokyo race came to Zürich and did something extraordinary.
He did not copy Warholm’s race.
He built the record differently.
The First 200m: Fast, Controlled — and Already Closing Warholm
Dos Santos ran in lane six with Warholm directly outside him in lane seven.
That made the visual story unusually clear.
Warholm is one of the most aggressive first-half runners the 400m hurdles has ever seen. His greatest performances are built around attacking the first five hurdles hard and daring the rest of the field to survive.
Dos Santos did not panic when Warholm moved.
He simply began erasing the stagger.
Published hurdle-touchdown analysis puts dos Santos at approximately 5.74 to the first hurdle, 9.26 through hurdle two, 12.84 through hurdle three and 16.46 through hurdle four.
Against Warholm in the same race, he was faster in almost every early interval.
By hurdle five, the difference on the clock was already roughly four tenths.
World Athletics described the stagger as effectively gone by halfway.
But even that does not explain why this became a world record.
The extraordinary part came later.
ITC Race Analysis: The Record Was Won in the Second Half
1. Dos Santos Did Not Spend the Whole Race Fighting His Own Early Speed
The 400m hurdles is brutally unforgiving because every decision made during the first 200 metres is charged interest during the second.
Go too cautiously and the race is already lost.
Attack too violently and stride length, posture and hurdle accuracy begin collapsing after hurdle seven.
Dos Santos found an extraordinary balance.
His opening was world-class, but the rhythm still looked controlled rather than desperate.
2. Hurdles Five Through Eight Were Exceptional
This is where the race began becoming historically special.
His published intervals were approximately:
3.71, 3.81, 4.05 and 4.03 seconds.
Notice hurdle eight.
He ran the section from hurdle seven to hurdle eight in approximately 4.03, actually faster than his previous interval.
At that point of a 400m hurdles race, that is immensely difficult.
The body is beginning to lose force. Ground contact tends to lengthen. The athlete begins negotiating the hurdles instead of attacking through them.
Dos Santos was still preserving velocity.
3. Around Hurdle Eight, He Was Only Just Reaching Warholm’s Old World-Record Schedule
This is the most fascinating number in the whole performance.
Published biomechanical analysis of Warholm’s 45.94 Olympic world record had him around 32.04 seconds at hurdle eight.
Dos Santos in Zürich was approximately 32.06.
In other words, with roughly 110 metres remaining, dos Santos had essentially arrived at the old world-record line.
The new record had not yet really been created.
Then he created it.
4. Hurdles Eight to Ten: He Kept Gaining
Dos Santos reached hurdle nine in approximately 36.29 and hurdle ten in 40.74.
Warholm’s Tokyo world-record analysis placed those points at roughly 36.32 and 40.76.
Dos Santos had moved from fractionally behind the old record schedule to fractionally ahead.
But only fractionally.
The world record was still hanging in the balance.
5. Then Came the Final 40 Metres
This may have been the finest part of the entire race.
From the final hurdle to the finish, dos Santos covered the run-in in approximately 5.06 seconds.
Warholm’s published run-in during the Tokyo 45.94 was about 5.18.
That is approximately twelve hundredths gained after hurdle ten alone.
The record fell by fourteen hundredths.
That tells us exactly what kind of world record this was.
Dos Santos did not merely run faster early.
He decelerated less.
Dos Santos vs Warholm in Zürich: The Gap Kept Growing
| Point | Dos Santos | Warholm | Dos Santos Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hurdle 1 | 5.74 | 5.80 | 0.06 |
| Hurdle 3 | 12.84 | 13.05 | 0.21 |
| Hurdle 5 | 20.17 | 20.61 | 0.44 |
| Hurdle 6 | 23.98 | 24.50 | 0.52 |
| Hurdle 8 | 32.06 | 32.70 | 0.64 |
| Hurdle 10 | 40.74 | 41.49 | 0.75 |
| Finish | 45.80 | 46.69 | 0.89 |
The progression is almost perfect.
0.06 at hurdle one.
0.44 by hurdle five.
0.64 by hurdle eight.
0.75 over the final hurdle.
0.89 at the line.
There is no single catastrophic mistake from Warholm that explains the difference.
Dos Santos simply kept extracting hundredths throughout the entire race.
His Stride Economy Was Also Remarkable
The available race analysis counted approximately 133 total strides for dos Santos compared with 139 for Warholm and 139 for Ezekiel Nathaniel.
Stride count by itself is not a measure of quality — taller or longer-striding is not automatically better.
What matters is the relationship between stride length, cadence, hurdle positioning and loss of horizontal velocity.
But in this race the lower count is consistent with what the eye shows: dos Santos was covering the ground with enormous efficiency while maintaining unusually clean hurdle spacing deep into the race.
Official Men’s 400m Hurdles Results — Zürich 2026
| Place | Athlete | Nation | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alison dos Santos | Brazil | 45.80 WR |
| 2 | Karsten Warholm | Norway | 46.69 |
| 3 | Ezekiel Nathaniel | Nigeria | 47.50 |
| 4 | Matheus Lima | Brazil | 47.57 |
| 5 | Abderrahman Samba | Qatar | 47.77 SB |
| 6 | Matic Ian Gucek | Slovenia | 47.80 NR |
| 7 | Dany Brand | Switzerland | 48.92 PB |
| 8 | Chris Robinson | United States | 51.41 |
And Then — 37 Minutes Later — Masai Russell Ran 12.09
If dos Santos’s record was an exercise in preserving velocity for 400 metres, Russell’s world record presented almost the opposite problem.
The women’s 100m hurdles gives an athlete virtually no time to correct anything.
Ten hurdles.
Eight and a half metres between them.
Three steps.
Again.
Again.
Again.
At 12-second speed, a small mistake at one hurdle can affect the take-off point for the next and begin a chain reaction that destroys the race.
Russell produced almost none of that disruption.
She ran 12.09 seconds.
Tobi Amusan’s previous record was 12.12.
And the wind gauge read 0.0 m/s.
ITC Race Analysis: Why Russell’s 12.09 Was So Good
1. The Start Was Good — But It Did Not Create the World Record
Russell reacted in approximately 0.140 seconds.
Amusan reacted in 0.148.
The difference was only eight thousandths of a second.
Russell ultimately beat Amusan by 0.14 seconds.
So this was not a case of one athlete stealing the race at the gun.
The separation was created after the start.
2. Amusan Was Competitive Early
Amusan remains one of the greatest starters and rhythm hurdlers of her generation, and she was very much in the race through the opening barriers.
Russell did not instantly disappear.
She built the advantage.
Race reports and the video show the decisive separation beginning around the middle of the race, approximately from 40 metres onward.
3. Russell’s Middle Hurdles Were Almost Mechanically Boring — Which Is Exactly What You Want
The best hurdle races often look less dramatic than ordinary ones.
There is no exaggerated leap.
No visible reaching.
No long floating phase.
Russell attacked the barrier, snapped the lead leg back down and immediately re-established her sprint rhythm.
The hurdle became part of the stride cycle rather than an interruption to it.
That is the entire goal of elite sprint hurdling.
4. Her Centre of Mass Stayed Moving Forward
At slower levels, athletes often clear the hurdle by moving excessively upward.
Vertical displacement costs time.
Russell’s best clearances are aggressive but flat: enough height to clear safely, but with the body travelling forward rather than floating over the barrier.
That allows the landing leg to touch down closer to the athlete’s centre of mass and reduces braking.
5. There Was No Late Technical Collapse
This is where many apparently brilliant 100m hurdles races disappear.
An athlete is flying through hurdle seven and then begins reaching.
The touchdown moves too far forward.
The three-step rhythm becomes slightly cramped or slightly stretched.
One hundredth becomes three.
Three becomes five.
Russell continued increasing the separation late in the race.
Reuters described the decisive advantage as appearing around the final hurdle.
She did not merely survive hurdle ten.
She sprinted off it.
Zero Wind Changes the Conversation
Eugene 2022
0.0 m/s wind
Russell had already been threatening the record all season.
She ran 12.14 earlier in 2026, at the time the second-fastest legal performance in history.
She had also run 12.17 in 2025.
So 12.09 was not an inexplicable bolt from nowhere.
It was the logical extreme of a progression that had been moving toward Amusan’s record for more than a year.
Russell herself raised the obvious question afterwards: what happens if a race this technically good arrives with a strong but legal tailwind?
That does not mean simply adding a wind conversion and declaring a future time.
Hurdling does not work that neatly because wind also changes spacing and take-off positions.
But 12.09 at 0.0 makes one thing clear:
sub-12 is no longer an absurd conversation.
Perhaps the Greatest Detail: The Former World-Record Holder Ran 12.23
Tobi Amusan did not have a poor race.
She ran a 12.23 season best.
That is elite.
Nadine Visser ran 12.34, also a season best.
Russell did not need her rivals to fail in order to look exceptional.
She simply ran away from an excellent field.
Official Women’s 100m Hurdles Results — Zürich 2026
Wind: 0.0 m/s
| Place | Athlete | Nation | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Masai Russell | United States | 12.09 WR |
| 2 | Tobi Amusan | Nigeria | 12.23 SB |
| 3 | Nadine Visser | Netherlands | 12.34 SB |
| 4 | Danielle Williams | Jamaica | 12.56 |
| 5 | Ackera Nugent | Jamaica | 12.69 |
| 6 | Pia Skrzyszowska | Poland | 12.70 |
| 7 | Ditaji Kambundji | Switzerland | 12.82 |
| 8 | Annik Kälin | Switzerland | 12.87 |
| DQ | Alaysha Johnson | United States | DQ |
Two Records — But Almost Opposite Performances
What makes Zürich particularly fascinating for coaches is that the two records illustrate opposite ends of hurdle performance.
Dos Santos had 400 metres to manage energy distribution, stride rhythm, hurdle approach and fatigue.
Russell had barely 12 seconds in which every barrier arrived almost immediately after the previous one.
Dos Santos’s masterpiece was the ability to keep his race together after 300 metres.
Russell’s masterpiece was the ability to never let hers come apart in the first place.
What 45.80 Tells Us About Modern 400m Hurdling
For decades, Kevin Young’s 46.78 looked almost untouchable.
Then Warholm, Benjamin and dos Santos changed the event.
Warholm ran 45.94.
Benjamin ran 46.17.
Dos Santos ran 46.29.
Now dos Santos has taken the event to 45.80.
He is only the second man ever below 46 seconds.
But perhaps more importantly, he has shown that Warholm’s Tokyo race was not the absolute endpoint many assumed it might be.
Different athletes can reach the same performance territory through different race models.
Warholm’s 45.94 was famously aggressive.
Dos Santos’s 45.80 appears more balanced, with extraordinary preservation of velocity through the final third.
What 12.09 Tells Us About Women’s Sprint Hurdling
Russell’s record may have even more room around it.
Not because 12.09 is anything less than extraordinary.
Because it came with zero wind.
She did not receive the kind of +1.5 or +1.9 following wind that can help produce an exceptionally fast legal sprint time.
And she is 26.
Her technical development does not necessarily have to be finished.
Russell entered 2026 already as the Olympic champion.
Now she has the world record as well.
She has combined championship success with raw historical speed — something relatively few sprint hurdlers ever achieve simultaneously.
A Strange Symbolism: Both Previous Record Holders Watched Their Records Disappear
There is something almost cinematic about what happened.
Warholm did not learn that his record had disappeared while sitting at home.
He ran 46.69 and watched dos Santos cross almost nine tenths ahead of him.
Amusan did not receive the news later either.
She ran a season-best 12.23 and watched Russell stop the clock at 12.09.
Two champions were present when the next generation of the record book arrived.
And both performances deserve an important qualification:
these were not weak old records.
Warholm’s 45.94 was one of the most celebrated marks of the modern era.
Amusan’s 12.12 had survived four years and had been challenged repeatedly by some of the finest hurdlers in history.
Zürich took both of them in the space of one evening.
Alison dos Santos did not simply run 45.80.
He took perhaps the most famous 400m hurdles performance ever produced, stayed almost exactly with its schedule through 300 metres and then ran the final 100 metres better.
Masai Russell did not simply run 12.09.
She broke the women’s 100m hurdles world record without measurable wind assistance while the woman who owned that record ran a season best beside her.
One athlete conquered fatigue.
The other conquered precision.
Both conquered history.
And for 37 extraordinary minutes in Zürich, the hurdle record book simply could not stay still.
- World Athletics — Zürich world-record report
- Wanda Diamond League — Dos Santos and Russell break world records
- 4H World — 400m hurdles hurdle-by-hurdle analysis
Hurdle-by-hurdle timing is based on published race-analysis data rather than official World Athletics intermediate timing and should therefore be interpreted as analytical race splits. Both world-record performances remain subject to ratification.