Faith Kipyegon: The four-minute mile challenge will have to wait

Technology can do almost anything. And Faith's faith tries to fill the gap.

Although this doesn't work for him.

Faith Kipyegon (31) pushes hard and doesn't think. She just runs, obeys and chases the cloud of stars that surround her (Engels, Grant Fisher, Kinyamal, McSweyn, the Dutch Laros and Nillesen, Elliot Giles...) while she disobeys herself: her body asks for a truce, her body is about to explode, the pain becomes unbearable.

So much so that the castle collapses on the last lap: the Kenyan star closes the final section in 1m05s and goes up to 4m06s42s.

And then, it collapses onto the synthetic.

"I still believe it's possible. If I don't do it, another woman will. But we'll do it," she proclaims when she catches her breath.

I still believe it's possible. If I don't do it, another woman will. But we'll do it." Faith Kipyegon Athlete

This was a challenge among equals: this Thursday, June 26, 2025, a woman was trying to emulate a man, Sir Roger Bannister, that wonderful athlete who on May 6, 1954, broke the four-minute barrier in the mile: 3:59.4.

The first human being to achieve it.

(71 years have passed; today, hundreds of men have succeeded Bannister, but no women.)

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Sir Roger Bannister was also a renowned neurologist and died in 2018, and of his feat we are left with a range of black and white images, the legend of a human being writhing on a cinder track.

So, they said that it had been an impossible milestone.

On the synthetic Charléty, a stadium dyed purple, Faith Kipyegon's favorite color, our heroine looks like a laboratory mouse, surrounded as she is by thirteen extraordinary athletes, men and women, also surrounded by technology.

She wears the Nike Victory Elite FK that the swoosh brand designed for her (who would have told her that when she was a kid, running barefoot and winning under-20 world titles in cross country).

She wears a Nike Fly Suit, a kind of dryland neoprene designed using computer simulations and wind tunnel runs. She chases the wave light that marks her pace on the track's ring, like a green carpet. She also chases the pacers, phenomena that have been working alongside her for months, rehearsing the rhythm: 14.9 seconds per hundred meters, 29 seconds long per two hundred meters, 59 seconds for the 400 meters, and so on for four laps and nine meters, until her body explodes.

Faith Kipyegon listens to the voices of Keely Hodgkinson, the sensational 80-meter runner, Olympic gold medalist in Paris 2024, who is acting as a speaker because she is currently suffering from an Achilles tendon injury, and also the encouragement of Carl Lewis, athletics legend.

(This show is a Hall of Fame.)

Inside, Kipyegon also hears an echo, the words of her coach, Coach Sang , the man who says he gets “butterflies all over his body” when he sees her run, and those of Eliud Kipchoge, the marathon philosopher who, during the long breaks in Kaptagat, in the Rift Valley, after sipping tea and tasting ugali, approaches her and says:

-Faith: When the time comes, it will be the moment when women in Kenya, Indonesia, and the United States realize that a female runner can achieve the same things as a male runner.

Behind the scenes, Kipchoge, the only human being to break the two-hour barrier in the marathon, tells us all this, everything he's telling Kipyegon. We hear from people from all over the world: Iberians, British, Italians, Americans, Scandinavians, Mexicans, Japanese...

On the synthetic, Faith Kipyegon faces the moment of truth, although she doesn't think about it.

Just run and suffer.

Better not to think.

If there's one woman in the world capable of accomplishing such a feat (even if it's never been an official world record), it's her. Faith Kipyegon is a triple Olympic champion. A multiple world champion. She holds the world records for the 1,500m and the mile, and has a seven-year-old daughter (Alyn), and is estimated to be worth five million euros. She has it all, and that's why, when we asked her what she's doing here, immersed in such a challenge, she answers:

Months ago, I asked myself, 'What do I have to do now that I've achieved everything? Why can't I dream of breaking out of the box?'

And here he is, experimenting with science and pain.

Science and pain: in the past, in this same Charléty, he has broken the world records for the 1,500 and 5,000 meters, but this is something else.

We're not asking you to beat your record now.

We asked him to spray it.

She needs to beat herself by eight seconds (her record is 4:07:64). And to achieve such a seemingly impossible feat, conditions must be perfect.

Come on: 25ºC. Not a slight breeze. A stadium at its best.

-Go, Faith, go!!

The splits are close. 1:00.20 for the first lap. 2:00.78 for the 800m. 2:30.68 for the kilometer. So far, it's just about pace.

But then, he loses his composure. As he approaches the final lap, he's already pitching forward. He tackles it in 3:01:84. He needs to break 59 seconds, but he can't do it there. Wave Light slips away from him, just like a rabbit slips away; time flies, the pain is unbearable. When he finishes, he clocks 4:06:42. It's the best time in history (his world record is 4:07:64); you have to start somewhere.