World record progression for the mile run

Accurate times for the mile run (1.609344 km) were not recorded until after 1850, when the first precisely measured running tracks were built. Foot racing had become popular in England by the 17th century, when footmen would race and their masters would wager on the result. By the 19th century "pedestrianism", as it was called, had become very popular.

The best times recorded in the 19th century were by professionals. Even after professional foot racing died out, it was not until 1915 that the professional record of 4:12¾ set by Walter George in 1886 was beaten by an amateur.

Progression of the mile record accelerated in the 1930s, as newsreel coverage greatly popularized the sport, making stars out of milers such as Jules Ladoumègue, Jack Lovelock, and Glenn Cunningham. In the 1940s Swedes Arne Andersson and Gunder Hägg lowered the record to just over four minutes (4:01.4) while racing was curtailed in the combatant countries due to World War II. After the war, it was John Landy of Australia and Britain's Roger Bannister who took up the challenge of being the first to break the fabled four minute mile barrier. Bannister did it first, and Landy did it 46 days later. By the end of the 20th century, the record had been lowered to 3:43.13, by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco in 1999. [ [http://iaaf.org/statistics/records/gender=M/allrecords/discipline=MILE/index.html IAAF International Association of Athletics Federations - IAAF.org - Statistics - Records ] ]

On the women's side, the first sub-5:00 mile was achieved by Britain's Diane Leather 23 days after Bannister's first sub-4:00 mile. But the IAAF did not recognize women's records for the distance until 1967, when Anne Rosemary Smith of Britain ran 4:37.0. The current women's world record is 4:12.56 by Svetlana Masterkova of Russia, set on August 14, 1996.

Since 1976, the mile is the only non-metric distance recognized by the IAAF for record purposes.

The number of high-quality races over the distance is few in recent years as most major international meets concentrate on the "metric mile" distance of 1,500 m (0.932 miles).

Men's record progression

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DateFormat = dd/mm/yyyyPeriod = from:1850 till:2000TimeAxis = orientation:horizontalScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1850

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TextData= fontsize: M pos:(520,250) textcolor: blue text: Amateurs pos:(520,220) textcolor: red text: Professionals pos:(520,190) textcolor: orange text: IAAF

LineData= width: 0.2 color: red at: 26/07/1852 tillpos: 204 at: 28/09/1857 tillpos: 204 at: 12/07/1858 tillpos: 189 at: 27/10/1860 tillpos: 186.75 at: 11/07/1863 tillpos: 185.25 at: 23/04/1864 tillpos: 181.5 at: 19/08/1865 tillpos: 171.75 at: 19/08/1865 tillpos: 171.75 at: 14/05/1881 tillpos: 168.6 at: 23/08/1886 tillpos: 158.25

LineData= width: 0.2 color: blue at: 02/09/1852 tillpos: 276.0 at: 03/11/1858 tillpos: 255.0 at: 15/11/1858 tillpos: 255.0 at: 24/11/1859 tillpos: 240.0 at: 23/05/1862 tillpos: 219.0 at: 10/03/1868 tillpos: 208.8 at: 03/04/1868 tillpos: 206.4 at: 31/03/1873 tillpos: 205.8 at: 30/05/1874 tillpos: 198.0 at: 19/06/1875 tillpos: 193.5 at: 16/08/1880 tillpos: 189.6 at: 03/06/1882 tillpos: 178.2 at: 21/06/1884 tillpos: 175.2 at: 26/08/1893 tillpos: 173.4 at: 06/07/1895 tillpos: 171.0 at: 28/08/1895 tillpos: 166.8 at: 27/05/1911 tillpos: 154.2LineData= width: 0.2 color: orange at: 31/05/1913 tillpos: 163.2 at: 16/07/1915 tillpos: 157.8 at: 23/08/1923 tillpos: 151.2 at: 04/10/1931 tillpos: 147.6 at: 15/07/1933 tillpos: 142.8 at: 16/06/1934 tillpos: 140.4 at: 28/08/1937 tillpos: 139.2 at: 01/07/1942 tillpos: 138.6 at: 10/07/1942 tillpos: 138.6 at: 04/09/1942 tillpos: 133.8 at: 01/07/1943 tillpos: 127.8 at: 18/07/1944 tillpos: 124.8 at: 17/07/1945 tillpos: 124.2 at: 06/05/1954 tillpos: 118.2 at: 21/06/1954 tillpos: 114.0 at: 19/07/1957 tillpos: 111.6 at: 06/08/1958 tillpos: 103.5 at: 27/01/1962 tillpos: 103.2 at: 17/11/1964 tillpos: 102.3 at: 09/06/1965 tillpos: 100.8 at: 17/07/1966 tillpos: 93.9 at: 23/06/1967 tillpos: 93.3 at: 17/05/1975 tillpos: 93.0 at: 12/08/1975 tillpos: 88.2 at: 17/07/1979 tillpos: 87.0 at: 01/07/1980 tillpos: 86.4 at: 19/08/1981 tillpos: 85.59 at: 26/08/1981 tillpos: 85.2 at: 28/08/1981 tillpos: 81.99 at: 27/07/1985 tillpos: 78.96 at: 05/09/1993 tillpos: 73.17 at: 07/07/1999 tillpos: 69.39

Professionals

=IAAF era=

+ - indicates time not ratified by the IAAF. Actual times run are noted above. Those times with an asterisk were not the times ratified by the IAAF. Marasescu's 4:22.09 was ratified as 4:22.1. Slaney's 4:21.68 was initially ratified as 4:21.7 until the IAAF recognized times to the hundredth of a second from 1 May 1981.

Mary Slaney ran 4:17.55 in Houston on 16 February 1980, and Natalya Artyomova (Soviet Union) ran 4:15.8 in Leningrad on 6 August 1984, but neither time was ratified by the IAAF.

References

ee also

World record progression 1500 metres

Further reading

*Cordner Nelson and Roberto Quercetani, "The Milers", Tafnews Press, 1985, ISBN 0-911521-15-1
*Bascomb Neal, "The Perfect Mile", Houghton Mifflin, 2004, ISBN 0-618391-12-6

External links

* [http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~jah/teach/st540/data/mile.info Runner's World data]
* [http://runningtimes.com/rt/articles/?id=6385 Running Times Magazine data]
* [http://user.uni-frankfurt.de/~khg/Rekorde/progtkwm.htm Frankfurt University] de icon
* [http://www.apulanta.fi/matti/yu/wrprogr_Women.html#Mile Women's progression]
* [http://www.saunalahti.fi/~sut/eng/wwrrun.html#mile Another women's mile progression]
* [http://user.uni-frankfurt.de/~khg/Rekorde/progtkww.htm Frankfurt University (Women's progression)] de icon