Josh Kerr of Great Britain has broken a 27-year-old world record in the iconic 1-mile (approximately 1.609 km) race.
Kerr won the men's 1-mile event at the 2026 World Athletics Diamond League held in London, United Kingdom, with a time of 3 minutes and 42.66 seconds. This surpassed the previous world record of 3 minutes and 43.13 seconds, set by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco in 1999, by 0.47 seconds.
Kerr is a middle-to-long-distance specialist whose primary event is the men's 1,500m. He won a bronze medal in the men's 1,500m at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and a silver medal in the same event at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
As there are no Olympic Games or World Championships held this year, he focused his training on the 1-mile distance.
Although the 1-mile run is not an official Olympic event, it is a discipline with great symbolic significance in the history of athletics.
In 2018, the global athletics community mourned the passing of Roger Bannister of Great Britain, the first person in human history to break the 4-minute barrier in the 1-mile run.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)