Hodgkinson hits her stride in Lausanne to set bar for Tokyo

Keely Hodgkinson sent another ominous warning to her rivals before the World Athletics Championships next month as she smashed the meeting record to win the 800m at the Lausanne Diamond League.

- Sean Ingle

In weather more akin to Manchester in October than a summer's night in Switzerland, Hodgkinson ran 1min 55.69sec to win her second race in five days. The Olympic champion's time was nearly a second outside her performance on Saturday in Poland, the ninth quickest in history. But in cool, wet conditions she still ran the second fastest time of the year.

Audrey Werro of Switzerland took second in 1:57.34 after passing Hodgkinson's training partner, Georgia Hunter Bell, in the closing metres. But they were all in a different stratosphere to Hodgkinson, who wiped from the record books Maria Mutola's time of 1:56.25, set in 2002.