Josh Kerr Breaks the Mile World Record, Ending a 27-Year Wait
3:42.66 in London: the first man ever under 3:43, taking down a mark set by Hicham El Guerrouj back in 1999.
By Miles Ashworth · 19 Jul 2026 · 3 min read · Canada edition
Josh Kerr, Great Britain, 2024. Photo: via Wikimedia Commons (GFDL).Britain's Josh Kerr ran 3:42.66 for the mile at the London Diamond League on Saturday 18 July, becoming the first man in history to go under 3:43 and breaking a world record that had stood since 1999.
That record belonged to Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran 3:43.13 in Rome, one of the most enduring marks in track and field. For more than a quarter of a century it was the standard every great miler was measured against, and none of them had got to it. Kerr had talked openly about going after it, and his team gave the attempt a name: Project 222, for the 222 seconds of a 3:42 mile.
How the record fell
It was a planned attack, and it went close to plan. Kerr's training partner Brannon Kidder took the field through the first 400m in 54.75, on world-record pace, with Kerr a few strides back in 55.3. Kidder led through 800m in 1:50.63, with Kerr at 1:51.1, and then Slovenia's Žan Rudolf took over the pacing for another 200m.
After that Kerr was on his own. He went through 1200m in 2:46.39 and 1500m in 3:27.62, and from there it was a question of whether he could hold on for the last 109 metres. He did, just. "I knew I had a 3:42 in me," he said. "I nearly lost it there at the end, but I got over the line." Of the noise in the London Stadium over the final stretch, he said simply: "I was deaf in the last 110 metres."
Behind him the field was a long way back. American Yared Nuguse was second in 3:45.69, Britain's Jake Heyward third in a personal best of 3:46.73 and Germany's Robert Farken fourth in a national record of 3:46.82. The winning margin was more than three seconds.
Who Josh Kerr is
Kerr was born in Edinburgh in October 1997 and went to the University of New Mexico, where he won three NCAA titles before turning professional in 2018. He still lives and trains in Albuquerque, coached by Danny Mackey with the Brooks Beasts, and the altitude work there was a large part of the build-up to this attempt.
His championship record was already one of the best in British middle-distance history. He won 1500m bronze at the Tokyo Olympics, then beat Jakob Ingebrigtsen in a sprint finish to win the 2023 world title in Budapest. In Paris in 2024 he ran 3:27.79 for Olympic silver, beaten only by Cole Hocker's Olympic record. He is also a two-time world indoor champion over 3000m. What he did not have, until London, was a world record.
The record he broke
El Guerrouj's 3:43.13 came in Rome in July 1999, in a race where Kenya's Noah Ngeny also ran under the old record in second. That shows how fast the race was. Ngeny went on to set the 1000m world record later that summer, a mark that itself stood until Emmanuel Wanyonyi broke it in Monaco eight days before Kerr's run.
In the 27 years between El Guerrouj's run and Kerr's, the mile record resisted a whole generation of the world's best 1500m runners. Several came within a second of it. None got under it.
Why the mile still matters
The mile is no longer a championship event, and most top middle-distance runners race it only a few times a season. It has kept its place anyway, because it carries the sport's best-known history. Roger Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile in 1954 is still one of the most famous moments in athletics. The record has moved rarely since, and every time it does it takes a little more out of what people thought was possible.
Kerr's 3:42.66 is the first new mile record in a generation, and the first time the event has belonged to a British runner since the days of Steve Cram.
