Kerr ends a 27-year wait as London finally gets its mile record

London likes a spectacle, and on Saturday the city got one that did not require a marketing department to inflate it. Josh Kerr ran the men’s mile in 3:42.66 at the Diamond League meeting in the London Stadium, taking down Hicham El Guerrouj’s 3:43.13 from Rome in 1999. A record that had survived for 27 years rarely falls by accident. This one was chased down in front of a near 60,000 crowd, which is about as close as athletics gets to a proper verdict.

Kerr, the 28-year-old Scot who is based in the United States, was guided through the race by his training partner Brannon Kidder and Slovenian Zan Rudolph before finishing with the sort of force that leaves no room for doubt. He is already a two-time world indoor 3,000m champion; now he has added the mile record to a career that is beginning to look less like promise and more like accumulation.

The meeting was not built around one man alone, though London was entitled to indulge him. Keely Hodgkinson returned to winning ways in the 800m, clocking 1:56.21 ahead of the Netherlands’ Femke Broeders-Bol, after ruling out any attempt at a world record. Julien Alfred, the Olympic 100m champion from St Lucia, remained unbeaten and improved her own meeting record from 2025 with a 200m win in 21.66 seconds. Gabby Thomas, the Paris 2024 200m champion, had to settle for second in 21.81.

There was also the less glamorous side of elite sport, which tends to arrive without warning and without ceremony. Armand Duplantis withdrew from the pole vault with a thigh issue, three weeks before the European championships in Birmingham. The US-born Swede had cleared 5.60m, failed once at 5.85m, then passed on that height before going over 5.95m alongside American Sam Kendricks, Australia’s Kurtis Marschall and Greece’s Emmanouil Karalis. When the bar rose to 6.04m, Duplantis stopped. His father and coach Greg watched from the stands, presumably with the same expression everyone else reserves for bad timing.

Kendricks won on countback with a season’s best of 5.95m. Karsten Warholm, another athlete who seems to treat London as personal territory, produced his usual front-running style to take the 400m hurdles in a world-leading 46.61 seconds. In the 800m, Olympic and world champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi was pushed down to fourth, while American Brandon Miller took victory in a personal best of 1:42.19. Ja’Kobe Tharp won the 110m hurdles in 12.89 seconds, a meet record, and Cierra Jackson threw 71.72m to win the women’s shot put. Nigeria’s Ajayi Kayinsola matched his national record of 9.84 seconds in the 100m, into a headwind, to beat world champion Oblique Seville.

For one evening, at least, the sport delivered what it still occasionally can: a record, a crowd, and enough high-class performances to make the circuit look less like a travelling obligation and more like a serious competition. Athletics does not often get that luxury. When it does, it should probably enjoy it.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com