Masai Russell breaks 100m hurdles world record, sets sights on sub-12
TheGrio...
Russell turned the disappointment of her 2025 season into a record-breaking comeback and believes she can go even faster.
Olympic champion Masai Russell has reached another milestone in her remarkable comeback. She broke the women’s 100m hurdles world record with a 12.09-second run at the 2026 Weltklasse Zürich Diamond League. After overcoming a difficult 2025 season, Russell is now setting her sights on becoming the first woman to break the 12-second barrier.
The performance capped an unbeaten season in the sprint hurdles and established Russell as the new world-record holder, pending World Athletics ratification. Her breakthrough comes after a difficult 2025 campaign in which she finished fourth at the World Championships despite entering the season with expectations of winning. According to The Olympics, Russell has spoken openly about what that disappointment taught her. Reflecting on last year, she said she had to “lose in front of the world” and “take the ‘L’s,” describing the experience as uncomfortable but ultimately transformative.
That mindset appears to have fueled her 2026 campaign. Russell had steadily lowered her personal best from 12.71 seconds in 2022 to 12.36 in 2023, 12.25 in 2024 and 12.17 in 2025. Earlier this year, she improved to 12.14 before producing Thursday’s historic 12.09. The conditions in Zurich made the performance even more intriguing. There was no recorded tailwind, leading Russell to wonder how much faster she could go with favorable conditions.
“I think if we get a +1.9 wind behind my back, that could have been a sub-12 race,” she said. Now, the barrier that once seemed almost impossible is firmly within her sights. Russell believes she could become the first woman to run the 100m hurdles in under 12 seconds, although she is reluctant to put a ceiling on her potential. “I don’t even like to put a number on what I believe I’m capable of,” she said.
Her record-breaking night was also part of a remarkable evening for hurdles, with Brazil’s Alison dos Santos breaking the men’s 400m hurdles world record earlier at the same Diamond League meeting.