Keely Hodgkinson came into the women's 800m final at the European Athletics Championships as a two-time defending champion, but Switzerland's Audrey Werro had other plans.
Werro, 22, crossed the line first in a championship record one minute 54.81 seconds, with Hodgkinson finishing in 1:55.01. The race drew a sellout crowd of 23,000 inside Birmingham's Alexander Stadium, according to BBC Sport.
The result was all the more striking given Werro had suffered a nasty fall in her semi-final on Thursday. Replays showed the left hand of France's Anais Bourgoin had clipped Werro's right foot. Clutching her chest in pain after finishing the semi, she faced a race against time to recover and was only reinstated into the final after a review. The incident created a congested ten-athlete final, but despite the extra competitors, the race came down to three athletes: Hodgkinson, Werro, and Dutch star Femke Broeders-Bol.
Hodgkinson allowed Werro to set the pace on the opening lap before attempting to make her move on the final bend, the same tactic Werro had used to beat her at the Stockholm Diamond League in June. This time, Werro held firm.
"Mixed emotions," Hodgkinson told the BBC. "I think with that level of competition, any medal is a really good achievement and another one to add to my collection, so I can never be disappointed with that. But I'm defending champion, so I wanted to do that. I knew it was going to come down to the wire but I really thought I was going to win today. It wasn't meant to be. I didn't do anything wrong - it was just one of those things."
The silver was the 24-year-old's 12th senior international medal since she won her first as a teenager at the European Indoor Championships five years ago. Hodgkinson had beaten Werro twice during the indoor season, including to claim her first world indoor title, but Werro's Stockholm performance this summer, which produced the first sub-1:54 clocking since 1983, signaled a shift in the rivalry.
The silver arrived 20 minutes after Zharnel Hughes took silver in the men's 200m. Great Britain now has ten medals over five days of competition but has fallen behind Italy in the overall medal table. Italy holds five gold medals to Great Britain's four.
