Josh Kerr ran 3 minutes 42.66 seconds for the mile at the Novuna London Athletics Meet on Saturday, breaking a world record that had stood for 27 years and becoming the first man to run the distance in under 3:43.
The old mark belonged to Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco, who ran 3:43.13 in Rome on July 7, 1999. Kerr took 0.47 seconds off it in front of a home crowd at London Stadium.
He had made no secret of the attempt. Kerr ran it under the name "Project 222" — 222 seconds, or 3:42.00, the time he was aiming at. He finished in 222.66.
The splits show both how close he came and how much the last lap cost. Paced by his training partner Brannon Kidder and by Žan Rudolf, Kerr went through 400m in 55.3, 800m in 1:51.1 and 1200m in 2:46.39. He crossed 1500m in 3:27.62 — quicker than the winning time in most global 1500m finals, run here as a waypoint rather than a finish. The remaining 109 metres to the mile took him just over 15 seconds.
The record's longevity was the unusual part. The mile mark fell repeatedly through the 1970s and 1980s — John Walker in 1975, Sebastian Coe twice inside ten days in 1981, Steve Cram in 1985, Noureddine Morceli in 1993 — before El Guerrouj's run in Rome stopped the sequence for a generation. No men's mile world record has stood as long since Roger Bannister broke four minutes in 1954.
Yared Nuguse of the United States finished second in a season's best 3:45.69, a time that would itself have been within a second and a half of the world record a decade ago. Jake Heyward, also of Britain, was third in a personal best 3:46.73.
It was not the only mark of the afternoon. Cierra Jackson threw 71.72m in the discus for a Diamond League record, and there were meeting records for Karsten Warholm in the 400m hurdles (46.61), Julien Alfred in the 200m (21.66) and Ja'Kobe Tharp in the 110m hurdles (12.89).
"I am surrounded by amazing people, so I have continued to put the work in and I knew I had a 3:42 in me," Kerr said.