Some sports medicine doctors sure think so! We’re working on the 2-hour men’s marathon, which has been done on the track.
Roger Bannister ran the first male sub-4 minute mile in 1954, and Diane Leather ran the first female sub-5 minute mile just days later, and in the same region of England. Both died in 2018; sure wish they could have been here to see this if it happens.
She’s currently the only one who’s even close. The next runner back is almost five seconds slower.
However, I want her to break it in a real race, not a staged event like that “sub 2 hour” marathon.
She ran a 4:07 back in July 2023. It’s only a matter of time (pun not intended) before 4:00 is broken.
It might be Kipyegon. She’s 31, though, and has been doing this a long time - she’s won the Olympic gold in the 1500 three times in a row now. And of course runners don’t get as many chances at mile glory as they used to because now the standard distance is 1500m at most competitions.
But if it’s not her, eventually someone will. I think it will take a long time though. The mile isn’t what runners generally train for. They’re aiming to hit the tape at 1500.
I don’t think until this moment did I realize that no woman had run a sub-4 mile. Huh.
I agree that if it is done, it should be in a race.
There’s a story that Roger Bannister ran his first 4 minute mile in a staged race with the other runners pacing him through the race, including at least one that didn’t even start the race until the last lap to keep up with him. He was advised not to ask for official recognition for that time because of the appearance that the race was rigged.
So yes, it would be best to set any new record in a legitimately recognized race.
Me to.
I had never imagined that women would not be as fast as men in running races.
But this is not something that I have ever followed, so could those who know please help clear up some ignorance?
How big is the difference between female and male running performance? Is it a simple matter of Bannister (and possibly a few others) being fast runners who just happened to be male, or is there a big gap in top-tier runner performance between men and women?
Pretty big gap. Multiple high schoolers have beaten the four minute mile, starting as early as the 60s. An over-40 man ran it.
25 so far. Sam Ruthe at age 15, just ran his a couple of days ago. He’s the youngest to break 4 minutes, breaking Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s record.
Looking at Athletic.net, the 25 fastest HS boys in the US ran 3:57.72-4:04.70 for a mile.
As for the women’s mile, at the world class level, 7 seconds is a massive gulf to bridge. The next fastest woman is just over 5 seconds slower so Kipeygon won’t have the “push” of close competition.
Oh, I didn’t think they’d be as fast as men, just I thought a woman had pulled off 3:59. I know the men’s record is way ahead.
For every track record, the men are ahead of the women.
It is mind blowing. I had an 8th grader competing against us get 4:59 and we could not believe it. It was extremely impressive.
7th grader 4:51.85 World age group record(11 y.o)
8th grade girl runs 4:48.96
Yes, I mean I am just a local coach. We don’t usually see even remotely close to world record type stuff.
Same here.
Closest runner was German Fernandez at Riverbank High.
I’ve read that it works better to calculate the speed that a one-mile runner makes rather than the number of minutes and seconds if you want to make predictions. I’ve done a few of the women’s fastest one-mile runs. This is their date and speed:
Future 15 miles per hour
10 JAN 1994 14.39 miles per hour
17 JAN 1968 14.25 miles per hour
20 JUL 1963 14.08 miles per hour
04 AUG 1958 14.025 miles per hour
Somebody else who wants to do the calculations can tell me what the expected time in the future is when some woman will run 15 miles per hour on a one-mile course. I’m going to arbitrarily say that the average speed is increasing by .1 miles per hour about once a decade. So the expected year when some woman will run a mile in four minutes (15 miles per hour) is about the year 2054. You can now tell me what an worthless idiot I am for calculating it this way.
I’ve heard that before puberty, their running speeds are the same. This conversation got started when a big road race that has mini-races the night before for children 12 and under had a female champion, first across the finish line, in the 11-year-old division. This youngster also knew how to run a half-mile, because that’s not done the same way as, say, 50 yards, and most children don’t know that.
Some of that is false. The race was staged in the sense that three men were going to be involved in the race, two as pace makers. At least one of the pace makers did finish. At that time, records set using pacers was a controversial thing. I think that the rule was that the pacemakers had to finish the race in order for it to count as a record. I think that many people treated a record as not legitimate even if the pacers finished the race.
Nobody joined on the final lap, so that is totally false.
As far as a woman breaking 4 minutes, I see it as unlikely for quite a while. When Bannister broke 4 for the first time, the 800 world record was 1:46.6. The current women’s world record is 1:53.28. That’s a long way to go.
It was during a track meet. There were more than just the three in the race.
The mile run on May 6, 1954 was going to take place as part of a dual track meet between Oxford and the AAA (the British Amateur Athletics Association). Bannister, Brasher and Chataway would all be running for the AAA. The meet would take place at the Iffley Road Track in Oxford, where Bannister had run countless times when he was a student at the university.
Since that time the concept of the asterisk entered the world of sports records. It was a good idea to withdraw the result of that race at the time, had it remained and someone else ran a 4.0 or under mile in a fully competitive race Bannon’s reputation and the record would have suffered.
As noted in that article, there is a psychological factor in breaking records. With fewer top level women running the mile with times approaching 4 minutes it will be more difficult to break that record as a result of competitive efforts. @Wendell_Wagner provided some times for women’s mile runs. I’d like to find what other races, longer or shorter, women are reaching or exceeding 15MPH. I’m sure that happens in much shorter races, but I’m wondering how women are doing in individual legs of a mile run or speeds attained in the 1500 and other races requiring more comparable stamina and speed.