Well, that was quite the boilover, wasn’t it?
Faith Kipyegon, the best female 1500 metres/miler ever – the best ever full stop, if we go by her unmatched three Olympic gold medals in a row, backed by all the considerable expertise Nike can bring, makes an attack on the four-minute mile. Faith’s feet were shod with the latest edition of Nike’s latest model spike, an edition carrying her initials, FK. She was wearing a 3D-printer produced sports bra and a ‘bumpy’ body suit dotted with ‘aeronodes’ to reduce drag. Rockstar-like she had a supporting entourage of, in her case, a baker’s dozen ‘pacers’; the 11 males would have constituted a Diamond League quality middle-distance field right there; two female pacers were tacked on almost as an afterthought.
Eliud Kipchoge was trackside. So, too, was Joan Benoit Samuelson. Up in the commentary position – just like James Brown, the king of them all – sat Carl Lewis; alongside him, Keely Hodgkinson. Nike royalty everywhere.
Breaking4 was always an aspirational aim for the project. Kipyegon held the world record for the women’s mile at 4:07.64. The goal was to close the gap between that time and four minutes. Nike had already set the prototype for landmark record shots with its Breaking2 marathon project for Kipchoge. He ran 2:00:25 in the Nike race and then bettered two hours in his next try, this time with Ineos holding the naming rights, running 1:59:41.
And Kipyegon did come away with a personal best, although not one that will count officially. At the time of writing (less than 12 hours after the race), there was still doubt about the exact time. The infield clock stopped at 4:06.91 and although this time is usually read more accurately on the photo-finish the difference is usually a couple of hundredths at most. Yet a minute or so later the official time for this unofficial race was given as 4:06.42. Whatever, it did better Kipyegon’s previous best by somewhere between 0.73 and 1.22 seconds. Given that any time would have been non-record-ratifiable, it scarcely matters.
Looking forward to this attempt a couple of weeks back this writer made the point that it took 21 years for men to move from Jack Lovelock’s 4:07.6 world record in 1933 to Roger Bannister’s ground-breaking 3:59.4 om 6 May 1954, a jump Faith Kipyegon was trying to achieve in two years. She fell well short of that leap – in Carl Lewis long jump terms it was a run-through; coincidentally, though, she did cut the sand, so to speak, spookily close to the 4:06.8 Glenn Cunningham ran to improve the men’s world record a year after Lovelock. Given Kipyegon’s credentials, it seems we won’t be seeing a sub-four by a woman for some time yet.
Faith Kipyegon ran a damned good race. In prospect, this writer had hoped for an outcome in which her chance of breaking four remained alive at the bell. Given that Faith has run as fast as 55.75 for the last lap of a 1500 (in the Budapest23 world championship final, in fact) that would have been somewhere around 3:03-3:04. The split was 3:01.84, so she ticked that box. She remained an outside chance at the 200, but it was clear there would be no heroic final sprint. In any other circumstances an improvement of around a full second, even by the world record holder, would have been acclaimed. Even if we give that acclaim in retrospect, it was in the circumstances, an anti-climax.
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There are many and varied reasons for that, no doubt. We can only speculate. One thing appeared clear – at least the optics did. The pacing arrangements didn’t appear to be as much help as expected. The 11 men split into two groups, six in front of Kipyegon and running wide enough to ensure she had clear room on the plinth, the other five behind along with the two women, Georgia Hunter-Bell and Jemma Reekie. Grant Fisher ran closest to Kipyegon in the first half of the race, Stewart McSweyn took the lead pace role in the second. This was probably wind-tunnel tested to within an inch of its life for maximum shielding, but it meant the smaller bodied Kipyegon was surrounded all race by bigger bodies. Perhaps Hunter-Bell and Reekie could have been better employed by being positioned closer to Kipyegon for the two laps they were in the race.
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We’re accustomed to seeing Kipyegon dominate her races. Perhaps she is not as comfortable being carried around as was the case in Charlety Stadium.
One undeniably positive aspect remains. We’ve had weeks of build-up and now analysis and reportage of one woman’s attempt to break four minutes for the mile. That doesn’t go close to balancing the almost 100 years of talking about men and the four-minute mile, for almost half of which women were not even permitted to run the distance, but as Faith Kipyegon said in her immediate post-race remarks: “It’s only a matter of time before it happens – if not me, then maybe someone else. I will not lose hope; I will still go for it.”
Just as Bannister and John Landy stood on the shoulders of Lovelock, Cunningham, Sydney Wooderson, Gunder Hagg and Arne Andersson – the men who successively brought the target within reach from 1933 on, so, too, if the first woman to break four minutes is someone other than Faith Kipyegon, they will be standing on hers.
