Josh Kerr became the first man to run a mile in under 3:43 on Saturday, clocking 3:42.66 to break Hicham El Guerrouj's 27-year-old world record in front of a sold-out 60,000-strong crowd at the Novuna London Athletics Meet. The Scot's run, pending ratification, took 0.47 seconds off the mark El Guerrouj set in Rome in 1999 and completed the "Project 222" campaign Kerr and Brooks had publicised for months, named for the 222 seconds he needed to beat.
The 2023 world 1500m champion was towed through the opening stages by training partner Brannon Kidder and Slovenia's Žan Rudolf, with Kidder passing 400m in 54.75 and Kerr a stride behind in 55.3. Kidder led to 800m, reached in 1:51.1, before peeling away and leaving Kerr to drive alone through 1200m in 2:46.39 as the London Stadium crowd roared him on. Kerr passed 1500m in 3:27.62 — inside his own British record for that distance — before grinding out the final 120 metres to stop the clock at 3:42.66.
American Yared Nuguse chased hard for much of the race but could not match Kerr's closing speed, finishing second in a season's best 3:45.69. Great Britain's Jake Heyward took third in a personal best of 3:46.73, with Germany's Robert Farken fourth in a national record 3:46.82. "It is very overwhelming. There was a lot of hype," Kerr said afterwards. "I knew I had a 3:42 in me. I nearly lost it there at the end, but I got over the line. The last lap was incredible — I was deaf in the last 110 metres."
Kerr's record was the headline act on a night thick with fast times across the Diamond League card. Keely Hodgkinson won a first head-to-head with world 400m hurdles champion Femke Bol over 800m in 1:56.21, world record-holder Karsten Warholm clocked a meeting-record 46.61 over the 400m hurdles, and Cierra Jackson launched a Diamond League discus record of 71.72m with her final throw. Emmanuel Wanyonyi, fresh off his 1000m world record in Monaco eight days earlier, could only finish fourth in the 800m as USA's Brandon Miller took the win in a lifetime-best 1:42.19.
Kerr's assault on one of athletics' most storied records ends a chase that stretches back to Roger Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile in 1954 and through Noureddine Morceli and El Guerrouj's era-defining runs of the 1990s. With the mile world record now under his name, Kerr is expected to shift his focus to defending his world 1500m title in Tokyo, though his coaching team has not ruled out a rematch over the distance before the season ends.