The former 1500m world champion has just bettered Hicham El Guerrouj’s long-standing mile mark on home soil.
In front of a roaring home crowd at the London Diamond League, British athlete Josh Kerr has on Saturday 18 July done what many deemed impossible and broken the men’s mile world record. Performing at a sell-out London Stadium, 28-year-old Kerr stormed across the finish line in 3:42.66, beating the seemingly untouchable previous mark of 3:43.13, which set by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj 27 years ago in 1999. For context, Kerr was born in 1997.
Yared Nuguse of the US took second, while Great Britain’s Jake Heyward took third to complete the podium.
But this world record was no happy accident – it was the goal for the race. Kerr, from Edinburgh, did not train to simply win the men’s mile at the London Diamond League, but to win it in a time that surpasses any other known mile time history. The former 1500m world champion and two-time Olympic 1500m medallist revealed his world record-breaking intentions earlier this year.
‘I’m going after the world record in the mile at the London Diamond League on 18 July,’ he told us at the time. ‘It’s one of the oldest world records right now in track and that’s because it’s really hard. It’s an awesome record and I’m committing my season to it. That’s what it takes at this point – it’s not really an afterthought.’
Kerr’s aim was to run his London Diamond League mile in 222 seconds, which would have taken him into unchartered sub-3:42 mile territory. Hence, the endeavour became known as ‘Project 222’.
He certainly trained hard for it, too, logging many savage Project 222 sessions – as documented on his YouTube channel – at his favourite training ground in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which sits at 1,600m above sea level. Training at altitude is very challenging – but it can also be very beneficial for performance.
The importance of the mile
The mile is an interesting distance to judge. If you run ultramarathons, a mile is like a grain of sand at a beach – but if you’re a 100m sprinter, the mile might feel massive. Drive a mile in the US and you’ll feel like you’ve barely moved, but drive a mile in Liechtenstein, which is 7.7 miles at its widest point, and you’ll have made some decent progress.
For British athlete Josh Kerr, his history-making mile at the London Diamond League must have felt like the longest and most difficult endeavour of his life – but also an empowering challenge that was over in an instant. And to do it in front of a British crowd? That was, arguably, part of the whole point for Kerr.
‘I think that [the mile is] the most important world record and that this world record is British,’ Kerr told us. ‘You know, it has been broken six times by British athletes and I want to be the seventh.’
And he did it.
