Why Women Are Still Chasing the 4-Minute Mile

For a long time, the idea of any human running a mile faster than 4 minutes was thought of as the impossible. But in the months after England’s Roger Bannister finally broke that record in 1954, suddenly elite male runners all over the world were setting new sub-4-minute records. More than seven decades later, a woman runner has yet to hit that same mark. As a journalist who covers women athletes and the author of a book about women and running, I’ve spent years thinking about whether it’s fair to hold women athletes to men’s standards—but also wondering whether women are capable of doing things many have assumed are only possible for men.

This summer, Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon—the fastest woman in the world at the mile—attempted to break the sub-4-minute mile at a stadium in Paris, backed by Nike and assisted by a cadre of men and women pacers. Nike called the project a “moonshot” and advertised it to the world as a moment where everything could change, if we only had “Faith” (get it?). I was both glad to see such attention paid to a woman athlete and put off by the idea that a woman running a sub-4-minute mile was set up as a near impossibility. But the thing about a moonshot is that, just like reaching the moon, even though it once sounded like science fiction, it is actually within reach.

In the 1950s, going to the moon probably did seem as improbable as a woman racing the mile. When Bannister became the first man to break through the 4-minute-mile barrier, it was universally acknowledged that women were always going to be far slower, weaker, and generally not as athletic as men—ever. In fact, just weeks after Bannister’s big accomplishment, an English woman ran the first-ever recorded sub-5-minute mile. Her name was Diane Leather, and she was far less celebrated than Bannister. Her feat was never even considered a “world record.” Why? Because women’s races weren’t sanctioned at the time for anything over 800 meters. (And change was slow. Women’s running pioneer Julia Chase-Brand ’64 had to risk a lifetime ban from the sport’s governing body just to enter a 4.75-mile road race in 1961.)

The reasons given for women not being allowed to run a mile or more in competition ranged from the societal (it’s unladylike; it’s unbecoming; she’ll grow too muscular, etc.) to the medical (she won’t be able to bear children; her uterus could fall out; she’ll expend all her energy on running and be disastrously ill for the rest of her days, etc.). These limitations were similar to myths about why women weren’t cut out to go to medical school, or law school, or even—in many cases—college, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

But Leather didn’t just prove women could set their own records; she showed that women should be competing regularly in the mile. Within a year, she’d brought the “world best” time down 15 seconds, to 4:45.0.

The fact remains that elite men runners have now been running miles under 4 minutes fairly regularly, and even brought the mile record down to 3:43.13 (in 1999), while women have yet to break the 4-minute mark. However, it may also be noted that the men’s world record has dropped less than 17 seconds, while the women’s mark has gone down more than 50 seconds—to Faith Kipyegon’s current record of 4:07.64—in the same period of time.

But why does the gap between male and female runners persist? Sarah Witkowski—who studies cardiovascular physiology and is head of the Department of Exercise and Sport Studies at Smith—points out that physiological differences exist along a spectrum, and the particular traits that help a person be a talented runner vary widely, not only between men and women but among men and women, as well as among the different types of runners: sprinters, middle distance, and endurance.

Sprinters, Witkowski says, have a better ability to make energy for movement at really fast rates, but can’t necessarily sustain that energy. They’re also particularly good at activating larger percentages of their muscles quickly. Middle-distance runners, like milers, are typically very effective at taking oxygen in and transferring it through their blood and into their muscles—sports medicine specialists call this having a high VO₂ max—and can sustain that state of high oxygen intake and transfer for longer than sprinters. Endurance athletes may not be as quick or as explosive, but they have excellent running economy, using less energy to maintain speeds than others.

And while all of these traits can vary genetically along a vast spectrum of human talent, Witkowski points out that none are entirely genetic gifts belonging solely to one sex: Training can improve them. Witkowski says the current performance gap in men’s and women’s mile times—slightly less than 10%—can likely be attributed to some biological factors that do account for differences between men and women. For instance, men’s hearts are generally larger, and they tend to have more hemoglobin, so not only do their hearts pump more blood but the actual makeup of the blood can carry more oxygen, increasing that VO₂ max. Men also, on average, have larger bodies and longer limbs, which help improve torque and power, and this likely plays into the sex performance gap. “When you look at the amount of power men can make from their muscles, and even when you compare it to their body mass, that power-to-body-mass ratio is typically higher in men compared to women,” Witkowski says.

But Witkowski cautions that holding women athletes to men’s standards sometimes misses the point. In many races, she says, “If you look at a chart of the top three women finishers and all the finishers in the men’s event, the women are usually in the middle of the mix. Meaning yes, sometimes they are faster than many of the men, and sometimes they’re not.” Like all sports, running is more than just a measure of physiological capacity; it’s a performance—one that’s full of variables, from the biological to the psychological to the environmental.

And running a mile is only one measure of strength, speed, and ability. For instance, men typically have muscles made up of more Type II fibers—the kind that can create a lot of energy very quickly but might not be able to sustain it for very long—while women typically have more Type I fibers, which are more fatigue-resistant. “This is why some people say women have an advantage in ultramarathon running events,” Witkowski says.

A woman running a 4-minute mile, though? It might not be such a moonshot after all. If anyone can do it, Kipyegon is the one to watch. Her Nike Paris exhibition event in June saw her come close, ultimately hitting 4:06.42—not an official world record, since the race wasn’t a sanctioned competition, but proving her mettle nonetheless. And somehow—at age 31, with a 7-year-old daughter—she is only getting better. This year, she also set a new world record of 3:48.68 in the 1,500-meter, which is 109 meters short of a mile, and she came closer than anyone has in 30 years to knocking off the 3,000-meter record, with an 8:07.04 performance this summer.

So, like Diane Leather before her, Kipyegon is proving that women are fully capable of doing things once considered as unreachable as the moon. And in the end, that’s the reason we love watching sports and seeing humans push their limits—not to prove that men or women are better, but to see if we can continue to change our definition of “impossible.”

Maggie Mertens ’09 is the author of Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women (Algonquin Books, 2024).