Werro, Tamberi Crowned European Athletes Of The Year
Switzerland’s Audrey Werro and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi were crowned the 2026 European Athletes of the Year at the Golden Tracks awards ceremony in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday.
Werro won the women’s award ahead of Great Britain’s four-time European champion Amy Hunt and Italy’s European 5,000m and 10,000m champion Nadia Battocletti.
The Swiss middle-distance runner became the first woman from Switzerland to win the award and only the second Swiss athlete to claim either of the senior trophies, following fellow 800m specialist André Bucher, who won the men’s award in 2001.
Werro produced a remarkable season in the 800m, recording the third, fourth and fifth-fastest times in history. She became only the third woman to break the 1:54 barrier, eventually clocking 1:53.70 to move within 0.42 seconds of Jarmila Kratochvílová’s long-standing world record.
Having previously won European U20 and U23 800m titles, the 24-year-old secured her first senior European crown in Birmingham, finishing ahead of reigning champion Keely Hodgkinson and Femke Broeders-Bol.
Werro subsequently defeated both athletes again to become the inaugural World Ultimate champion in Budapest.
She succeeded Broeders-Bol as European Athlete of the Year and became the first athlete since the Dutchwoman in 2022 to win the Rising Star and senior Athlete of the Year awards in successive years.
Tamberi made history by becoming the first Italian to win either the men’s or women’s European Athlete of the Year award since the honours were introduced in 1993.
The Olympic champion won the men’s award ahead of Sweden’s pole vault star Armand Duplantis and Greece’s long jumper Miltiadis Tentoglou.
Tamberi claimed a record fourth European high jump title in Birmingham before producing another outstanding performance at the World Ultimate Championships in Budapest, where he cleared a world-leading 2.37m to win gold.
The clearance equalled the third-highest jump of his career and was just two centimetres short of his Italian national record, set in 2016.
