How the women's 800m became athletics' headline act

Audrey Werro has come just 0.42 seconds shy of breaking the long-standing women's 800m record

For 32 years, the women's 800m was absent from the Olympics, with its competitors deemed too frail. Now, it is one of the most hotly anticipated events on the track.

The Amsterdam Games were the first to allow women to compete in track and field events. Five women's events were added to the programme - the 100m, high jump, discus, 4x100m relay and, controversially at the time, 800m.

German athlete Karoline Lina Radke, external became the first woman to win Olympic gold in the 800m - but she would also be the last for another 32 years.

Fast forward almost 100 years and the event now gets headline status at major events.

So how did the 800m become the 'one to watch'? BBC Sport spoke to the women who helped shape the race to find out.

It was the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and Ann Brightwell (nee Packer) had just crossed the finish line of the women's 800m to take gold - and set a new world record.

She told BBC Sport: "My husband, who was my fiance then, said to me, 'you don't realise what you've done'.

But the controversy hadn't completely gone away. Brightwell knew all about the claims that had seen women unable to compete for 32 years after the 800m was removed from the Olympics.

"And they took it upon themselves to make it look really bad. They were saying women were collapsing on the way round. But it was all a lie."

The 800m was finally reintroduced to the Olympic programme in 1960 and, four years later, the then-22-year-old Brightwell went to her first Olympics, fitting training around her job as a teacher.

"My school was very tolerant towards what I was doing, so I was fortunate."