On May 29, 1954—just 23 days after Roger Bannister entered the history books as the world’s first sub-four-minute miler—a 21-year-old British woman named Diane Leather notched a similar milestone. At the Midland Counties championship meet in Birmingham, she ran 4:59.6 to become the first woman under five minutes. “Thank goodness that’s over,” she told reporters. “Now I can concentrate on my chemistry exams.”
In the seven decades since then, women have edged steadily closer to Bannister’s mark. The current world record, set by Kenya’s three-time Olympic 1,500-meter champion Faith Kipyegon in 2023, is 4:07.64. Her corresponding 1,500-meter world record of 3:49.04 is equivalent to a mile in roughly 4:06.5, according to the World Athletics scoring tables. The gap is small enough, in other words, that you might start wondering just how fast she could go, and how close to the barrier she could get, in a rule-bending exhibition race modeled after Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour marathon events.
That’s the question posed in a new study[ADD LINK] in Royal Society Open Science by University…
