Faith Kipyegon attempts to make history by smashing the 4-minute mile for women

Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon is hoping to shatter one of track and field’s greatest milestones by becoming the first woman to run a mile in under 4 minutes. Running in Paris Thursday evening local time, the three-time Olympic champion will need to shave more than 7 seconds off her personal best.

But if she succeeds, the 31-year-old Kipyegon’s feat at the Stade Sébastien Charléty track in Paris won’t be recorded in the history books just yet. That’s because the Nike-sponsored event is considered an exhibition, so she isn’t eligible for the record.

“I’m a three-time Olympic champion. I’ve achieved World Championship titles. I thought, What else? Why not dream outside the box?” Kipyegon told Runner’s World. “And I told myself, ‘If you believe in yourself, and your team believes in you, you can do it.'”

Two seconds on each of the four laps is what Kipyegon needs to subtract to beat the current world record of 4 minutes, 7.64 seconds that she set in Monaco nearly two years ago.

In announcing the event in April, Nike described the attempt as Kipyegon’s “moonshot” and “a historic benchmark that was once considered an insurmountable limitation.”

Speaking ahead of Kipyegon’s run, Rodger Kram, an associate professor emeritus of interactive physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, told NPR’s Morning Edition that the key to her success would be the use of pacers, just as they were for Roger Bannister’s record-breaking mile in 1954.

Bannister, a Brit who was a medical student and amateur athlete at the time, ran with two pacers, drafting them for the first three and a half laps of his record-breaking mile. The pacers — or drafers — Kram explained, reduce air resistance, “pushing the air out of the way. … at 15 miles an hour, which is what she’s trying to run, it’s substantial.”

Kipyegon will employ rotating pacers and, according to Runner’s World, custom spikes, “an innovative, first-of-its-kind speed suit, and a sports bra made of a revolutionary 3D-printed performance material.”

Kram and his fellow researchers believe that Kipyegon could break the 4-minute mark, “Our calculations show that she can. And they’re based on experiments and, you know, sure, some assumptions, but I think it’s quite reasonable,” he said.

“My biggest worry today is the wind… it could be a crosswind,” he added. “And that still increases the energy it requires to run.”

Thursday’s run in Paris is at the same track where Kipyegon won gold in the 1,500- meter during the 2024 Olympics — an event she had gold-medaled in twice previously, at the Tokyo and Rio Games. She also won silver in the 5,000meter at Stade Sébastien Charléty in 2024.

Bannister became the first person to break the 4-minute mark on May 6, 1954, at a track in Oxford, England, with a time of 3:59.4, according to Guinness World Records. He was later knighted for his feat. Bannister died in 2018.