Swiss athlete Audrey Werro claimed her first senior international title by beating home favourite Keely Hodgkinson over 800m at the European Championships in Birmingham, England.Werro, 22, won in a championship-record time of 1:54.81s, taking more than half a second off Olga Mineyeva’s championship record of 1:55.41s that had stood since 1982.Hodgkinson, the defending European champion from 2024 and Olympic gold medallist, relinquished her continental crown, taking silver as she finished two tenths back on Werro (1:55.01s), while also going under Mineyeva’s 1982 record. Femke Broeders-Bol of the Netherlands tied her national record for bronze (1:55.54s).The win owed to perfectly-executed tactics by Werro, who beat Hodgkinson, 24, for only the second time in their ninth meeting. The Briton ran the opening bend hard from lane five, vying to be first at the break point to get onto the rail. Werro started in lane nine because she had been advanced to the final after tripping in the semi-final. By 200m, the Swiss woman had caught up to Hodgkinson and took a lead that she never gave up.“I had a lot of emotion in me. I’m really happy with this medal,” Werro said in an interview on the track.They hit 400m in 56.45s and a breakaway group of four emerged, with Jemma Reekie tagging onto the trio of Werro, Hodgkinson and Broeders-Bol, who were in a race together for the very first time. This is Broeders-Bol’s debut 800m season after a glittering 400m hurdles career.