Tobi Amusan no longer owns the women’s 100 metres hurdles world record. American Olympic champion Masai Russell ripped the mark away with a stunning 12.09-second run in Zurich on Thursday night, ending the Nigerian star’s four-year reign at the top of the event.
And Amusan had the closest possible view of history changing hands. She finished second in 12.23, a season best, as Russell produced the fastest women’s 100m hurdles performance ever recorded.
World Athletics lists Russell’s 12.09 as a world-record performance pending formal ratification. The mark improves Amusan’s previous global standard of 12.12 by three hundredths of a second.
The crown has changed hands.
But Zurich also delivered a warning against writing the Nigerian out of the next battle.
Amusan’s 12.23 was her fastest performance of the 2026 season and left her comfortably ahead of European champion Nadine Visser, who finished third in a season-best 12.34.
Russell, however, was operating at another level. She attacked the hurdles cleanly, maintained her form through the closing metres and crossed the line before the clock delivered the number that changed the event: 12.09.
For Nigerian athletics, the breakthrough carries an unavoidable emotional edge. Amusan’s record was more than a number. It was one of Nigerian sport’s strongest claims to global track-and-field supremacy; a mark that survived championship cycles and repeated attacks from an increasingly deep generation of hurdlers.
Russell had already been closing in. World Athletics had recorded her at 12.14 earlier in the 2026 season, just two hundredths outside Amusan’s then-world record. This time, there was no escape for the clock.
Russell is now the woman everyone else is chasing.
For Amusan, the equation flips instantly.
She entered Zurich as the world-record holder and left it as the second-fastest woman on the night but with a season best that showed she remains firmly inside the event’s elite.
The world record is gone. The rivalry is not.
Russell has seized the numerical throne, but Amusan now has something she has rarely carried during her years at the summit:
A target in front of her. For four years, the world chased Tobi Amusan. After Zurich, Tobi Amusan is chasing the world again.
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