Kenyan just about matches Sydney Wooderson’s 1937 world record of 4:06.4 during a valiant but ultimately doomed attempt to break four minutes for the mile
Protected by a flotilla of pacemakers and powered by Nike’s latest shoes and apparel, plucky Faith Kipyegon gave it her best shot over the classic distance of one mile in Paris on Thursday (June 26). It wasn’t the ‘moonshot’ the organisers hoped for, but if you reach for the stars then at least you’ll hit your head on the ceiling.
Featuring cringeworthy presentation that wouldn’t have looked out of place a few kilometres down la rue in Disneyland Paris, combined with a target that was always clearly beyond even Kipyegon’s rare ability, this could easily have ended up more ‘Breaking bad’ than ‘Breaking4’. But when she beat her previous best – and world record – of 4:07.64 with 4:06.42, it was a face-saving performance.
As the University of Exeter physiologists who had helped her in the build-up correctly predicted a few weeks ago, there is no woman alive who currently has the physiological weaponry to break four minutes but, Professor Andy Jones told AW, we could see Kipyegon nudging further toward the four-minute barrier. And so it proved.
Carl Lewis was at his articulate best on Thursday night when he described the four minutes as a wall. “Faith has just knocked some bricks out of it,” he concluded.
Keely Hodgkinson was impressive as a fellow Breaking4 pundit on the live event broadcast and maybe the female sub-four-minute miler of the future will need to possess Keely-esque speed combined with the kind of stamina Kipyegon has.
Notably, in the lead up to the event Kipyegon only competed once, running a 1000m race in China where she just about managed four-minute mile pace. During a curious online ‘press conference’ a few days before the mile attempt – orchestrated by Nike with their host asking all the questions – Kipyegon didn’t look particularly confident. Neither did her coach, Patrick Sang, on the eve of the event.
There were further warning signs. Her training, she admitted, had not changed in recent months. “I’ve been praying a lot as well,” she added.
Those who refused to be believe the hype proved to be correct. In my preview piece, I suggested Kipyegon would struggle to break her best of 4:07.64, let alone give the four-minute barrier a scare.
After violent winds and lighting strikes hit Paris the night before Kipyegon’s time trial, her run proved to the calm after the storm as opposed to the fantastical sub-four performance Nike had dreamt about. Certainly, the final episode of the Amazon Prime three-parter on the attempt, which is due out in July, is unlikely to go viral.
Breaking4 in Paris was very different to May 29 in 1954 when Diane Leather became the first woman to run a sub-five-minute mile. On that occasion her 4:59.6 happened at the humble Midland Women’s Championships on a cinder track at Perry Barr in Birmingham with archaic spikes, no pacemakers and barely any publicity. Leather even limbered up for the race by running a UK all-comers’ record in the 800m of 2:14.1 less than an hour earlier.
Years later, female athletics has taken great strides forward and a sub-four-minute mile will be achieved one day by a woman. Just not quite yet.
On Thursday in Paris, not only did Kipyegon struggle to match Roger Bannister’s iconic 3:59.4 from 1954 but she couldn’t beat Sydney Wooderson’s 1937 world record of 4:06.4, which the bespectacled ‘mighty atom’ ran in a handicap race in Motspur Park.
Perhaps therein lies the secret to a future Breaking4 attempt? Rather than using pacemakers to shield you from the wind, maybe the female sub-four-minute miler of the future will need someone to chase instead.
