He had a special singlet designed and undoubtedly carbon shoes. Makes you wonder how much raw human potential has progressed vs just having better equipment and track surfaces?
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British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
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Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, they have that as well. You can see it in the photo here: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jul/18/josh-kerr-make...
Aha, thanks! Do you have any insight into what algorithm it uses? Like a ghost runner of the record pace or something?
I don't know. My knowledge is largely based on the caption of that photo :D
I would guess it's just uniform world record pace, and it's up to the runner to use their own strategy - stay just in touch with the light for the first three laps and overtake it on the fourth, or something.
Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The shoes definitely help, but there are all sorts of other innovations that get far less press. More is known about optimal fuelling, hydration and sleep. Improve those and you improve your daily training. Better quality training compounds and allows you to reach closer to your talent ceiling. Kerr also had a system set up so his bedroom had less oxygen than the rest of his house (to mimic sleeping at altitude). He…
Nitrates to dilate vessels just seems like cheating in the PED sense
Nitrate supplements wouldn't seem to meet the WADA criteria for inclusion on the prohibited substance list because they don't present a health risk to the athlete. A lot of endurance athletes are using beetroot supplements and so far there haven't been any adverse effects.
https://www.wada-ama.org/en/what-we-do/world-anti-doping-cod...
Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The shoes definitely help, but there are all sorts of other innovations that get far less press. More is known about optimal fuelling, hydration and sleep. Improve those and you improve your daily training. Better quality training compounds and allows you to reach closer to your talent ceiling. Kerr also had a system set up so his bedroom had less oxygen than the rest of his house (to mimic sleeping at altitude). He…
Nitrates to dilate vessels just seems like cheating in the PED sense
There are off the shelf supplements that are widely used for this, e.g. BeetElite which contains nitric oxide derived from beet juice. I can testify that they do offer a real performance benefit - in my case I've found them beneficial when running at altitude as a (very) amateur. I'm not sure how/when something like this should become a banned PED.
Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#25He had a special singlet designed and undoubtedly carbon shoes. Makes you wonder how much raw human potential has progressed vs just having better equipment and track surfaces?
>Makes you wonder how much raw human potential has progressed Surely raw human potential cannot have progressed very much at all in the (at most) two generations represented by the 27 years the record stood. Granted, the population is significantly higher, so it is more statistically likely that we've produced a genuinely faster human than existed 27 years ago. I think it's fairly well accepted that most of the recor…
I think a lot of it is also more people doing the sports.
We are assuming the old record is "the best a human can do because one person did it best" or some form of that.
There are likely hundreds or thousands of people alive right now who could break this record given the same lifestyle and training.
Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#26He had a special singlet designed and undoubtedly carbon shoes. Makes you wonder how much raw human potential has progressed vs just having better equipment and track surfaces?
>Makes you wonder how much raw human potential has progressed Surely raw human potential cannot have progressed very much at all in the (at most) two generations represented by the 27 years the record stood. Granted, the population is significantly higher, so it is more statistically likely that we've produced a genuinely faster human than existed 27 years ago. I think it's fairly well accepted that most of the recor…
Not everybody who can run, runs. Not everybody who runs, runs close to their full potential. Even elite athletes have a life that can “get in the way.” Many who run close to their full potential get injured and set their training back.
Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#27Is this because most East Africans don’t really try to beat the mile (instead doing the 1500m) since there’s no money in it?
I'm sure the record standing so long is partially down to the fact the mile isn't run at major championships, although the middle distances like 800m and 1500m are more of an open field and not dominated by East Africans like longer distances such as 5k and 10k (Josh Kerr is already an Olympic silver medallist, finishing behind a white American and ahead of an Ethiopian-American).
> I'm sure the record standing so long is partially down to the fact the mile isn't run at major championships
I'm not so sure about that. The 1500 is the equivalent race run at major championships (and most paced time trials). But that record (3:26.00 by Hicham El Guerrouj) has stood one year longer, and is generally considered a stronger record. This is possibly the closest anyone's ever come to an equivalent performance to the 1500 record, in either the mile or the 1500. The second-fastest 1500m time ever is 3:26.34 by Bernard Lagat in 2001. The World Athletics scoring tables value a 3:42.66 at about 3:26.3, eyeballing the midpoint of given values. (Or taking the WA point values on the top lists, Josh Kerr's new mile record is 1298, Lagat's second-best 1500m is 1297, and El Guerrouj's 3:26.00 is 1302.)
I don't know whether the WA points or other conversion methods actually have small enough error bars to distinguish between the Lagat and Kerr performances, but the 1500 record beats the mile record by a big enough margin that I don't think we need to worry about that.
https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/middlel...
https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/middlel...
Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#28Watch him do it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYi2f4ONEDg&t=180
What an incredible performance. I've seen a sub-4 mile in person. These guys are absolutely flying. All of them. And he beats the pants off that field.
Splits (400m):
400m: 55.3
800m: 1:51.1 (56.8 second lap)
1200m: 2:46.5 (55.4 second lap)
1600m: 3:41.4 (54.9 third lap)
Mile: 3:42.66
100m: 13.8
200m: 27.5 (13.7)
300m: 41.0 (13.5)
400m: 55.3 (14.3)
500m: 1:09.3 (14.0)
600m: 1:23.2 (13.9)
700m: 1:37.0 (13.8)
800m: 1:51.1 (14.1)
900m: 2:05.1 (14.0)
1000m: 2:18.8 (13.7)
1100m: 2:32.6 (13.8)
1200m: 2:46.5 (13.9)
1300m: 3:00.3 (13.8)
1400m: 3:14.0 (13.7)
1500m: 3:27.7 (13.7)
1600m: 3:41.4 (13.7)
Mile: 3:42.66 (1.2 for the final 9.34m)
Official results at https://london.diamondleague.com/programme-results/
Unfortunately you can't link directly to the 1 mile results. Scroll down to the table, select "1 Mile Men", then select "Reports", then "Race Analysis" and/or "Race Analysis Graphical". That leads to these two PDFs (not sure these links are stable):
https://ps-cache.web.swisstiming.com/node/binaryData/ATH_PRO...
https://ps-cache.web.swisstiming.com/node/binaryData/ATH_PRO...
Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#29He had a special singlet designed and undoubtedly carbon shoes. Makes you wonder how much raw human potential has progressed vs just having better equipment and track surfaces?
>Makes you wonder how much raw human potential has progressed Surely raw human potential cannot have progressed very much at all in the (at most) two generations represented by the 27 years the record stood. Granted, the population is significantly higher, so it is more statistically likely that we've produced a genuinely faster human than existed 27 years ago. I think it's fairly well accepted that most of the recor…
There’s a psychological factor. Many people believed it wasn’t humanly possible to do a sub 4 minute mile before Bannister accomplished it.
Once that was done the flood gates opened and many others broke it in the following months. This is the “central governor” theory in endurance sports.
Re: British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nitrates to dilate vessels just seems like cheating in the PED sense
Where do you draw the line? (I know that the answer to that question is always 'somewhere') No one's getting significant levels of baking soda from their diet, and caffeine is a relatively recent cultural addition to most diets. The gels are much the same. Getting the same nutiritional ratios used to require carefully controlled eating and certainly weighed vastly more than the gels adding both weight and complexity…
Athletics has never maintained any sort of "leaderboard" for unsanctioned exhibitions. When Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon-distance time trial sub 2 in 2019 it was an amazing feat of human performance but no one was under any illusions that it was a record.