Josh Kerr broke the world record for the mile at the London Stadium on Saturday, running 3:42.66 to erase a mark that had stood since 1999 and to become the first man to run the distance in under three minutes and 43 seconds.
The Scottish runner took 0.47 seconds off the record of 3:43.13 set by Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj in Rome in July 1999, ESPN reported. Yared Nuguse of the United States finished second in 3:45.69.
The final lap
Kerr described a closing stretch run in front of a home crowd that he said he could barely hear. "It was just me, my shoes and the track. I was absolutely deaf in that last 110 meters," he said. He called the crowd's support "just incredible."
He also described the moment the record came into view. "I didn't take my foot off the gas, but I started to glide and I was like 'Oh wow, this feels incredible,'" he said, adding: "I better get to the line. So, crossing the finish line, seeing 42-something, anything, was my goal, so it was great."
A record that outlasted a generation
El Guerrouj's 3:43.13 had been among the most durable marks in track and field. Set at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, it survived 27 years of advances in training, pacing and shoe technology, a period in which records at many other distances were rewritten more than once.
The mile occupies a particular place in athletics. It is the only imperial distance for which World Athletics still ratifies a world record, a survival owed largely to the event's history in Britain and the United States, and to Roger Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile at Oxford in 1954.
What it means for the event
Kerr's run lands in a period of unusual depth in men's middle-distance running. Nuguse's 3:45.69 in second place would itself have ranked among the fastest miles ever run not long ago, an indication that the improvement is not confined to one athlete.
Whether the mark proves as durable as El Guerrouj's is another question. Records at 1,500 meters and the mile have tended to move in clusters, as a generation of runners pushes one another, and then to sit untouched for long stretches once that group moves on.
For now the record belongs to a British runner, in a British stadium, in an event Britain has a long claim on. Kerr, who won the world 1,500 meters title in 2023 and took Olympic bronze at the distance in Tokyo, had built a reputation as a championship racer rather than a record hunter. On Saturday he was both.
