Why is the women’s 800m record so tough to break?Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Keely Hodgkinson has the sixth-fastest outdoor 800m time in historyByEmma MiddletonBBC Sport journalistPublished45 minutes agoThe world record for the women’s 800m is the longest-standing in athletics. No-one has managed to break it for 43 years.So why, despite leaps forward in shoe technology and our understanding of nutrition and recovery, has that record not fallen?Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson is one of the top three middle-distance runners in the world competing at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham this week. So could that record, finally, be broken?The untouchable recordThe women’s 800m world record is held by Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova, who ran a time of one minute 53.28 seconds in 1983.There have been claims that Kratochvilova’s performance in Munich was assisted by the systematic doping regime that existed in her country at the time – something she has strenuously denied.
Kratochvilova’s record is not the only one to be questioned.
Marita Koch of East Germany set the women’s 400m record two years later, in 1985 – when the country was known to be systematically doping its athletes.
But Koch never failed a drugs test, and always maintained she did nothing wrong.
In 2017, European Athletics proposed wiping out records set before 2005.
The proposals never went any further. But they sent a strong signal that some records set before 2005 – when World Athletics (formerly IAAF) started storing blood and urine samples – could be disputed.
Back in 1983, then 32-year-old Kratochvilova crossed the finish line more than seven seconds ahead of her closest rival, Poland’s Jolanta Januchta.
No-one would come within a second of Kratochvilova’s record for 25 years.
The closest any athlete has come to breaking it is Swiss athlete Audrey Werro, who ran a time of 1:53.80 in June this year.
