Swiss athlete Audrey Werro claimed her first senior international title by beating home favourite Keely Hodgkinson over 800m at the European Championships in Birmingham, England.

Werro, 22, won in a championship-record time of 1:54.81s, taking more than half a second off Olga Mineyeva’s championship record of 1:55.41s that had stood since 1982.

Hodgkinson, the defending European champion from 2024 and Olympic gold medallist, relinquished her continental crown, taking silver as she finished two tenths back on Werro (1:55.01s), while also going under Mineyeva’s 1982 record. Femke Broeders-Bol of the Netherlands tied her national record for bronze (1:55.54s).

The win owed to perfectly-executed tactics by Werro, who beat Hodgkinson, 24, for only the second time in their ninth meeting. The Briton ran the opening bend hard from lane five, vying to be first at the break point to get onto the rail. Werro started in lane nine because she had been advanced to the final after tripping in the semi-final. By 200m, the Swiss woman had caught up to Hodgkinson and took a lead that she never gave up.

“I had a lot of emotion in me. I’m really happy with this medal,” Werro said in an interview on the track.

They hit 400m in 56.45s and a breakaway group of four emerged, with Jemma Reekie tagging onto the trio of Werro, Hodgkinson and Broeders-Bol, who were in a race together for the very first time. This is Broeders-Bol’s debut 800m season after a glittering 400m hurdles career.

Werro showed superior speed endurance on the second lap with near-perfect 100m splits of 14.6s, 14.6s, 14.3 and 14.8s.

“One mistake and you’re lucky to recover,” he said. Werro, having slowed midway through the second lap in her semi-final — which caused the field to bunch and led to her foot clipping another runner — clearly learned from that. Between 500 and 600m, she made sure that Hodgkinson did not close the gap.

The British athlete’s efforts to rally on the home straight and chase Werro down were met with roars by a sold-out crowd of 23,000 at Alexander Stadium. She ran more than three seconds quicker than she had in the same final two years ago, and while Hodgkinson did not get the medal she wanted, taking silver means she continues her streak of medalling at every international championships — this is her 12th career podium.

(Sona Maleterova/Getty Images)

“I’m sure we’ll have many battles ahead, I’ll settle for silver,” Hodgkinson said in an on-track interview. This is a first defeat in a senior European final for the Briton, who had won four golds from as many finals indoors and outdoors, and and was vying to become the first to defend the title at two consecutive championships.

Werro, meanwhile, caps the best two-lap season by a woman since the turn of the century. In her first full season at senior level she produced the third, fourth and ninth-quickest times ever this year. The standout of those was the win over Hodgkinson at the Stockholm Diamond League in June, when she ran 1:53.80s — the best performance since the world record was set in 1983.

Having first competed against one another four years ago, six of the 10 races between Hodgkinson and Werro have had them as the top two. Hodgkinson is up 8-2 on the head-to-head, and they may meet again on the Diamond League circuit this summer, before a likely showdown at the World Ultimate Championships in Budapest in mid-September.

Seattle Seahawks edge defender DeMarcus Lawrence told Yahoo Sports that the 2026 season will be his last.

Lawrence, 34, joined the Seahawks in March 2025 as a free agent after 11 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys, then helped Seattle win Super Bowl LX in February. His family, including his wife, Sasha, and six children, still lives in Dallas, which Lawrence said was a reason he considered retiring after the 2025 season.

“It was a tough process,” Lawrence told Yahoo. “But through the grace of God, I’m able to play another year and soak it all up one more good time before I hang it up.”

Lawrence joined the Seahawks on a three-year, $32.5 million contract, with an additional $10 million available via incentives. A day later, he sparked a tiff with former Cowboys teammate Micah Parsons by saying: “Dallas is my home. I made my home there, my family is there, and I’m forever gonna be there. But I know for sure I’m not going to win a Super Bowl there.”

Lawrence did just that in Seattle, collecting two sacks, five quarterback hits, three tackles for loss and three forced fumbles in three playoff games during the Seahawks’ run to the Lombardi Trophy. That came after he had six sacks, 20 QB hits and 11 tackles for loss — plus two fumble recoveries returned for touchdowns, in the same game — during the regular season, earning Pro Bowl honors for the fifth time in his career.

A second-round pick out of Boise State in 2014, Lawrence had 61.5 sacks, 126 QB hits and 97 tackles for loss in 141 games with the Cowboys. In addition to four Pro Bowls with Dallas, he earned second-team All-Pro honors and finished fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting in 2017, when he posted a career-high 14.5 sacks and 26 QB hits.

The Seahawks face the Cowboys in their preseason opener Saturday and again on “Monday Night Football” on Dec. 7, although both games are in Seattle. Lawrence did not face his former team in 2025.

Mikel Arteta says he wants to be at Arsenal and will “resolve” his contract situation despite not yet extending his deal which expires in 2027.

The Arsenal manager’s last contract extension was a three-year deal signed in September 2024.

Entering a new season without fresh terms agreed, he said: “They (the fans) don’t have to worry about any of that, because I want to be here. I am extremely happy. I feel very grateful to work with the people that I work with and when we have the possibility, we will resolve that. And that’s it.”

His current deal being confirmed in September was timely as it came after the transfer window closed and during the first international break of the season.

On whether the busy nature of the summer transfer window makes finalising a new contract more realistic after the deadline, he added: “There is always another priority, I think! And that’s the way we have been treating it, I think because everybody feels comfortable that the time on the contract is not going to be an issue.

“My will, certainly, is to be here and I am very happy here. My feeling from the club is the same one. That is why everyone is doing things in a really organic way.”

Talks have been in progress since early this year, but when Arsenal first approached Arteta’s representatives, his preference was to wait until the end of the 2025-26 season.

The Arsenal manager not extending his contract until its final year is not unusual, as the one he signed in September 2024 was set to expire in 2025. His last two contracts have both been three-year deals.

Having been in the role since December 2019, Arteta is now the longest serving manager across the 92 teams in the English Football Leagues after Pep Guardiola, who Arteta was assistant to for three and a half years, left Manchester City this summer.

On managing to lift the Premier League with his mentor still in charge of his biggest rivals, after three years of finishing second place, Arteta added: “(It was) one of the probably biggest challenges that I have faced in my career. Because I know the standards, I know that they have the background, they have the stability. They had the quality to go and do it again.

Arteta guided Arsenal to the Premier League title last season. (Michael Regan/Getty Images For Premier League)

“So it’s been a real challenge. I took it in a way that, okay, regardless of what happens, this is going to make us better. It’s pushing boundaries time after time at every level and every department of the club to try to reach this level.

“When I arrived here, I had a sense in terms of distance and years how far we were behind. Because I was there and I could witness the daily operation and the level. And to be able to win it in the time that we’ve done it, I think we should feel proud of it.”

This season, Arsenal have the chance to do something they have not done in almost 90 years by retaining the league title. They begin their campaign next Friday at home to Coventry City, after facing Manchester City in the Community Shield on Sunday at the Principality Stadium.

Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi are expected to be back with the squad for the game against the FA Cup winners.