Masai Russell Breaks the 100m Hurdles World Record in Zurich

12.09 seconds — three hundredths faster than Tobi Amusan's mark from the 2022 World Championships, on the same night dos Santos broke the men's 400m hurdles record.

By Miles Ashworth · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 min read · United Kingdom edition

Masai Russell, Team USA, 2024. Photo: Habst, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

American hurdler Masai Russell ran 12.09 seconds in the women's 100m hurdles at the Zurich Diamond League, breaking the world record — a Diamond League record and meeting record in the same run.

The mark she took down belonged to Nigeria's Tobi Amusan, who had held it since 12.12 in her semi-final at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene. Amusan was in the Zurich final too, finishing second in 12.23; Nadine Visser took third in a season-best 12.34.

Russell's win came in what's been described as a near-perfect season for her over the distance — Zurich wasn't an isolated result but the peak of a run of form.

Coming on the same night as Alison dos Santos's men's 400m hurdles world record, it made Zurich's Weltklasse meeting a genuine two-world-record night — the kind of evening track and field gets maybe once or twice a season, if that.