Why Faith Kipyegon is praying for a sub-four miracle

Kenyan will do well to beat her current women’s world mile record of 4:07.64 in Paris this week

At the 50th anniversary celebration of Roger Bannister’s sub-four-minute mile in 2004 I was lucky enough to sit next to the world’s first female sub-five-minute miler, Diane Leather, at a special function at Oxford University.

Following her groundbreaking 4:59.6 in Birmingham in 1954, she had seen the women’s mile record tumble to 4:12.56. And, as we spoke, that time by Svetlana Masterkova had stood for eight years.

I asked her whether we might see a woman break four minutes any time soon and she shrugged dismissively: “I don’t think so. If it does happen, it’s a long way off yet.”

When Leather died in 2018, aged 85, Masterkova’s mark still survived as the No.1 performance by a woman. In 2019, though, Sifan Hassan improved the record to 4:12.33 and then, in 2023, Faith Kipyegon improved it to 4:07.64.

Now, this week, the 31-year-old is hoping to threaten the four-minute barrier during a time trial in Paris. Like fellow Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge, who famously ran a sub-two-hour marathon in Vienna in 2019, she has joined forces with Nike in an effort to create an historic barrier-breaking performance.

I was in Vienna for Kipchoge’s 1:59:41 and I remember being far more optimistic about his attempt than Kipyegon’s “Breaking 4” mile. The marathon man had already run 2:00:25 in Monza two years earlier, so he “only” had to find 26 seconds over 26.2 miles. In comparison, Kipyegon has the far more challenging task of finding almost eight seconds over just four laps of the track.

In an interview with Nike last week, Kipyegon revealed she has been praying a lot. She will need it. Nike has provided her with a state-of-the-art “Fly Suit” and new shoes – the Victory Elite FK – and she is expected to have a number of male pacers shielding her all the way to the finish. But will it be enough to help her break four minutes?

Even the team of sports scientists from the University of Exeter who have been analysing her physiology believe she has her work cut out to get close to four minutes.

In an academic paper published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, they write: “To our knowledge, there is no female athlete presently displaying the endurance parameter ratio, or other physiological characteristics, required to run a sub four-minute mile.

“Moreover, 800m performance amongst the world’s best…