Josh Kerr Breaks Iconic Mile World Record

Scottish athlete, Josh Kerr, smashed the long-standing one-mile world record at the London Stadium on Saturday 18 July 2026. He clocked an astounding time of 3:42.66, annihilating the previous world record of 3:43.13 set by Moroccan middle-distance legend Hicham El Guerrouj back in 1999 in Rome. Kerr had long predicted he would break the 27-year-old record, but even he must have been surprised by the margin by which he smashed it.

The race at the London Diamond League meeting came at a great time for Kerr with the Commonwealth Games getting underway this week in his native Scotland. Despite having won silver and bronze medals at the Olympics and golds at the World Championships and the World Indoor Championships, the Brit has never medalled at the Commonwealth Games. He managed only a 12th-place finish in the 1500m in Birmingham at the 2022 Games. He wasn’t even picked for the Scotland team four years before that. It’s fair to say Kerr has a point to prove.

Here we’ll look back at the progression of the men’s mile record. Note that the current women’s world record for the mile is held by the exceptional Kenyan athlete, Faith Kipyegon, who set her time of 4:06.42 on 26 June 2025 in Paris.

Kerr Joins List of Legends

The mile (or 1.609344 km) is one of the most iconic distances in athletics, perhaps rivalled only by the 100m. Since 1976, it has been the only non-metric distance sanctioned by World Athletics (which was known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) until 2019). Although various records were set for the mile from the 1850s onwards, achieved by both amateur and professional athletes, the event really began to grab the public’s attention from the early 1900s, and, specifically, from 1913 when the (then-named) International Amateur Athletics Federation began to ratify world records over the distance.

The record was variously held before World War II by athletes including John Paul Jones, Norman Taber and others. Then between 1942 and 1945 a great rivalry between two Swedish athletes helped them each break the mile record three times, getting agonisingly close to the four-minute mark. Despite their intense battles on the track, the pair became close friends. Sadly, they were both banned from competing at the Olympics for having the temerity to go professional, something that flew in the face of the strict ideals of amateurism in the sport at the time.

Roger Bannister Achieves the Impossible

Despite many people suggesting running a mile in under four minutes was impossible, Roger Bannister (and several other top athletes) had other ideas. Using extensive and innovative training methods (at the time, at least), Bannister prepared well for the attempt at the Iffley Road Stadium in Oxford on 6 May 1954. An eager crowd of some 3,000 spectators turned up to roar him on. Bannister also had a helping hand from two pacemakers on the day, Christopher Chataway (who would later win Commonwealth gold) and Chris Brasher (who won Olympic gold in the 3000m steeplechase in 1956).

Bannister put in the run of his life and, with the help of the crowd and the pacemakers, ran the mile in a time of 3:59.4… the first time anyone had dipped below four minutes. As the stadium announcer (who happened to be Norris McWhirter of Guinness Book of Records fame) read out the time, the spectators went wild as they realised they had witnessed history in the making.

Following in Bannister’s Footsteps

Once Bannister had shown the way to break four minutes, many great athletes followed his lead. Over the years, there have been some truly outstanding holders of the mile record, including several Brits: Derek Ibbotson, Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, and, now, Josh Kerr.