It took almost 39 years for Steve Cram’s British one mile mark to fall and the record-breaker who beat it, Josh Kerr, used similarly bold front-running tactics
When Steve Cram ran 3:46.32 to win the Dream Mile in Oslo in July 1985, little did he realise it would survive as the British record for quite so long. Finally, on Saturday in Eugene, it fell to Josh Kerr as the world champion ran 3:45.34 to beat Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen. “It’s about time!” said Cram.
It has taken 38 years and 10 months for Cram’s national mark – which was a world record at the time – to be broken. Incredibly, Cram has always felt he could have run quicker on that memorable night in Oslo too.
“I hadn’t really set out to break the record that night or anything,” he told AW a few years ago. “It was just a case of trying to win the race. I remember crossing the line and feeling ‘woah’ and later that night I said to a few people that if I did 3:46 feeling like that then 3:44 was possible.
“Of course you always think you’re going to get better and run faster. But I never ran a hard mile again in my life when I was in form. So I guess in terms of a physical accomplishment the mile is the one that stands out compared to my other records.”
Kerr’s record-breaking run at the Bowerman Mile was similar in many ways to Cram’s run in Oslo in 1985. Most notably, both men were in highly competitive races, as opposed to pure time trials, where winning was the priority.
Josh Kerr leads Jakob Ingebrigtsen (Jan Figueroa)
Whereas Kerr was up against Ingebrigtsen, Yared Nuguse, Neil Gourley and Jake Wightman on Saturday, Cram faced reigning Olympic champion Seb Coe, plus John Walker, Steve Scott, Ray Flynn, Abdi Bile and Jose Luis Gonzalez in the Dream Mile.
As the pacemakers in 1985, James Mays and Mike Hillardt, led through 400m in 56.01 and 800m in 1:53.82 with Cram leading at 1200m in 2:53.14, the pacemaker in Kerr’s race, Abraham Alvarado, went through 400m in 55.91 and 800m in 1:52.74 before Kerr reached 1200m in 2:50.70.
The two men didn’t shy away from taking the lead either. When the pace slowed briefly down the back straight for the penultimate time in Eugene, Kerr surged into the lead with 600m to go. Similarly, Cram went past Hillardt with just under 400m to go.
Neither man was content to cruise in the lead either. Instead, despite already running at a ferocious pace, they stretched their legs and challenged their rivals to keep up with…
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