It is 25th June 2025. I write this the day prior to Thursday 26th June 2025, the day that Faith Kipyegon will attempt to become the first female athlete to run a mile in under four-minutes, potentially marking a date in which something that many considered impossible, happens.
As far as I am concerned, it goes without saying that I will be tuning in. After all, my fandom for athletics is something I'd consider to be at 'geek' levels of enthusiasm – and I know for many fans like me, this is an exciting prospect with the weight of history, of brand-power, and of athlete personality, behind it. If it happens, this would be a seismic shift in history, not just for women's athletics, but for sports as a whole.
But to be clear, we athletics-heads understand that we exist in a bubble. Not everyone shares in our interest or shares it in the same way. Questions like "What does this mean, exactly?" or "Why should we care?" surround this event, and that's if a casual follower is even aware of it taking place.
To give it its full and proper intro, Breaking-4 is a project that aims to have (or at least facilitate) Faith Kipyegon becoming the first woman to run under 4-minutes for the mile. As the current world-record holder in the women's mile (standing at 4:07.64) and the closely-related 1500m, Kipyegon is widely considered to be one of the greatest runners of all time.
"I'm a three-time Olympic champion. I've achieved World Championship titles. I thought, What else? Why not dream outside the box?" said Kipyegon of the attempt in a piece for Nike.com.
With full backing from her sponsor, Nike, a host of considerations have been made to optimise her chances of success, including a one-off custom racing suit and spikes, hand-selected pacemakers, wave-light technology and an optimal venue for an attack on the 4:00 barrier. At 7:30PM Local Time, Kipyegon will line up with four-and-a-bit laps to run of the Stade Charléty track in Paris.
For the cynics amongst us, this looks as much as anything like a marketing stunt, thinly-guised as an event pushing the boundaries and visibility of women's sport. After all, there will be no official world-record even if Faith runs faster than 4:07.64. Much like the sub-2 hour marathon events held for Eliud Kipchoge, the laboratory-like conditions in which this 'race' will be run make it ineligible as an official World Record. Nike even unveiled a Breaking4 pop-up, featuring an homage to Faith and all the tech that has gone into the project.
But to that cynicism I say to you 'think again'. There is something more that means we should all care about Breaking4. As Kipyegon herself says, this is more about setting a bar high - a Moonshot, in Nike parlance - than it is about the barrier itself. It is especially prescient for her that this serves as a showcase of women's performance: "I want this attempt to say to women, 'You can dream and make your dreams valid...This is the way to go as women, to push boundaries and dream big" (via Nike).
A big part of Kipyegon's story has been how she has returned running since becoming a mother in 2018. Her pregnancy resulted in a C-section that left her unable to return to training for over 18-months, but has since climbed back to the very top of her game. It's a remarkable story, but one where the likes of which are still largely unprecedented in sport. The pressures which pregnancy have on a sporting, or any, career or passion-project are often huge, but also get swept aside and dismissed as a choice. With stories like Kipyegon's, and her embrace of her crossover between athletics and motherhood, a platform like Breaking4 can serve as tool to break down stigma surrounding pregnancy and women's health in sport.
Broadly speaking, Breaking4 also falls at a time when Nike are in the midst of a wider campaign focused on their Women's running division: the After Dark Tour. A global series of road races championing women and female-identifying runners and creating a space for them to run. While designed to be inclusive, catering to a vast array of abilities and entry-points, it serves as a welcome additional accompaniment to Breaking4's other-worldly performance focus.
Whether Faith will be able to Break 4 is another question in itself. The mechanics of the attempt are unfathomable. She must run a little under 60s per lap to cover the 1609 metres under the elusive barrier; for the metrically-minded, that is an average pace of under 2:30/km: 24kph or 15mph. Currently, her best time is the aforementioned 4:07.64, which is the fastest any woman has ever run before. Shaving off 7+ seconds in one mile is unheard of at the top level of athletics, but if anyone can do it, it's Kipyegon. Last year, she obliterated the previous record by nearly five seconds.
Ultimately, whether Faith Kipyegon runs sub-four for a mile is not the point of this project - although I'm sure she, her team and the entire Nike Running division are willing it to happen. The point is the elevation of Kipyegon as an athlete, for a figure like her to stand for people everywhere to chase a goal, no matter how big.
To read more about this attempt, see Nike's conversation with Faith Kipyegon alongside her mentor Eliud Kipchoge.
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Post-script: Ultimately, Kipyegon ended up clocking 4:06.42*, coming in under her current World Record. As mentioned, this will not count as an official World Record due to the way the race has been set up with pacemakers, shoe technology and certifications of the race.
Is this considered a failure? A success? To many looking in from an objective view, the idea was to Break 4 as the name suggests. All this technology, teamwork and hype to shave ~1-second from the current record? Yet Kipyegon herself remained buoyant and excited following the performance
Perhaps what this highlights more than anything is the means by which we should celebrate and elevate women in sport: not simply in terms of 'how they compare to male sports' but as an equally exciting, competitive and world-class sport in its own right.
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-By Liam Dee
