Kerr Shatters El Guerrouj's 27-Year-Old Mile Record
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- Josh Kerr ran 3 minutes, 42.66 seconds to break the men's mile world record at a Diamond League meeting in London on Saturday, celebrating with a lap of honor at London Stadium.
- Hicham El Guerrouj held the previous record of 3:43.13, set in Rome in 1999 — making Kerr's run the first improvement on that mark in 27 years.
- Kerr, 28, improved his own previous best of 3:45.34 (set in 2024) by more than two and a half seconds in a single race.
- Kerr targeted the mile — a non-championship event — as his main goal in a track season with neither an Olympics nor world championships on the calendar.
- Roger Bannister, another British runner, broke the four-minute mile barrier in 1954, a milestone the article cites to underscore the mile's iconic status in track history.
- Kerr was a silver medalist in the 1,500 meters at the 2024 Paris Olympics, making Saturday's record his signature achievement at the metric-mile distance.
Why it matters: Kerr, 28, became the first man to improve on El Guerrouj's 3:43.13 since 1999, cutting 0.47 seconds off a mark long considered untouchable. By choosing a non-championship discipline in an off-year, he wrote himself into a British miling lineage that includes Bannister's 1954 four-minute barrier.
