Since at least the 1940s and Sweden’s Gunder Hagg and Arne Andersson, interest in a sport second only to soccer in global popularity has been driven by the rivalry of two men, often polar opposites, and their pursuit of the track and field’s most revered and storied standard – the mile world record.
These rivalries have produced barrier-shattering performances and showdowns with billings that reflected the public’s interest and demand.
“The Miracle Mile”
“The Dream Mile”
“The Golden Mile”
“The Mile of the Century”
“The Perfect Mile”
And so it is that the first Mile of Century this Millennium, the promised assault on Hicham El Guerrouj’s 25-year-old world record in the Prefontaine Classic’s Bowerman Mile on Saturday in Eugene, Oregon, is the sport’s most anticipated race in decades due to not only the possibility of the first mile world record set on American soil since Jim Ryun did so in 1967 but because of the deeply personal nature of the rivalry between the event’s two headliners – Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the defending Olympic 1,500-meter gold medalist, and Josh Kerr of Great Britain and Scotland, the reigning World 1,500 champion.
“Between all of us and the media we’ve created some awesome storylines through out the last six months or so and I think that’s what creates hype,” Kerr said.
“This is a big one,” said Ollie Hoare, Australia and ON Athletics Club’s Commonwealth Games 1,500 champion. “It’s going to be a big one for a lot of egos.”
Kerr, 26, and Ingebrigtsen, 23, aren’t so much Generation Z’s version of Ryun and Marty Liquori or Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe as they are track’s Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
“It’s similar in that you’re dealing with two great athletes and I think the interesting aspect of this is what’s going to happen in the next five years,” Hoare said.
“The personalities that I know, and I know Jakob’s and I know Josh’s and it makes sense. It’s actually surprising that it’s taken this long. To be honest his makes sense because of who they are as people … they want to put on a show.”
The show, however, isn’t just Ingebrigtsen and Kerr. What Kerr labeled as “an Olympic final-stacked race, a World final-stacked race,” the deepest middle distance event held on U.S. soil since the 1984 Olympic Games 1,500 final, also includes Yared Nuguse, the American record holder and fourth-fastest man in history in the mile, another Scot, Jake Wightman, who upset Ingebrigtsen to win the 2022 Worlds 1,500 in Eugene, Hoare, who knocked off both Wightman and Kerr in the 2022 Commonwealth final, New Zealand’s Geordie Beamish, the World indoor 1,500 champion, Spain’s Mario Garcia, fourth and sixth in the 2022 and 2023 World 1,500s, and rising American star Hobbs Kessler, the World road mile champion.
“I mean it’s a bit of tossing and turning with the banter but really you can’t just disrespect that field,” Hoare said “because if you do you’ll get eaten alive.”
“The depth of our event, it’s not just one, two, three or four people. There are 12 people who are at a level that could potentially win the gold in Paris,” said Wightman, who announced his return with a world-class 1:44.10 in an 800 at the Los Angeles Grand Prix last weekend after missing most of 2023 due to injury. “I consider myself one of those and there are a lot of others who don’t get named who are more dangerous than people think.
Adding to the event’s luster is the venue itself. Perhaps only Oslo’s Bislett Stadium is as synonymous with the mile as Hayward Field and the Willamette Valley college town that calls itself as “Tracktown, U.S.A.”
More than 500 sub-4-minute miles have been clocked at Hayward, more than any other venue on the planet. The Pre Classic alone has produced 389 sub-4s. The race is named for legendary Oregon coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, who along with his vastly underrated successor Bill Dellinger, coached more than 30 sub-4 milers.
But for all its history Hayward has not produced a world record mile.
Hayward’s world record mile drought nearly ended in the Diamond League Final at the Pre Classic last September.
Nuguse during a pre-race press conference talked of breaking 3:46.
“Just stick with me as long as you can and we’ll get you sub (3:)46,” Ingebrigtsen, sitting next to him, said.
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Nuguse responded. “I might be closer than you think.”
With Yuguse hounding the Norwegian all the way to the finish line, Ingebrigtsen finished in 3:43.73, just off El Guerrouj’s world record of 3:43.13. Nuguse lowered the American record to 3:43.97.
Ingebrigtsen hadn’t even started his victory lap before the sport began focusing on this year’s Pre Classic and another crack at the world record. The back and forth between Kerr and Ingebrigtsen in the media and on social media since then has only heightened interest to a level usually reserved for heavyweight title fights. Indeed when the pair’s participation this weekend was announced earlier this spring track websites produced faux boxing posters for track’s would be Ali and Frazier.
Ingebrigtsen and Kerr aren’t the first superstar milers not to get along.
Australia’s Herb Elliott had been staying with world record holder Derek Ibbotson in England in August 1958 in the weeks leading up to lowering the global standard to 3:57.2 in Dublin.
Elliott returned to the Ibbotson residence to find his belongings on the front step.
“What’s my case doing out here?” Elliott asked.
“If you think you’re staying her after taking my record you can piss off,” Ibbotson snapped.
But there is a more deeply personal edge to the feud between Kerr and Ingebrigtsen, the first mile super heroes of the TikTok generation, and a rivalry that reflects the acrimonious time they live in.
Ingebrigtsen has a well-deserved reputation for dismissing his fellow competitors. Kerr has refused to be ignored.
“I don’t think they’ve tried to chase me down,” Ingebrigtsen said of his competitors last year. “I think they’ve tried to hold on as long as they could.”
Kerr, a former NCAA champion for New Mexico, is equally blunt.
“I’m a very honest individual, sometimes it’s not as honest confidence as possible,” Kerr told reporters last year. “But I believe in myself because I’ve put the hard work in, the honest work in. So listen I think the good guy always comes out on top.
“I’m not afraid to lose. I’m not afraid to take big swings at big races. So I’m excited to go after fast times and hopefully that’s what breaks records. But for me it’s all about August 6 at the Paris Olympics. These the big moments that you need to put together.”
Not that either runner is afraid to wear the black hat.
“I’m going to say my competitors are irrelevant in the way I see them [as] all the same,” Ingebrigtsen recently told the Times of London. “One of the main issues is they are very inconsistent and that means my rivals are always changing. From 2017 I have had 10 to 12 different rivals. It’s easier for them to have a rival in me but not as easy for me to have a rival in them.
“The biggest issue is giving people like Kerr attention. That’s what he is seeking. He is missing something in himself that he is searching for in others. I’m not the sort of guy to approve those sorts of things.”
They were asked Friday in Eugene to describe the current status of their relationship.
“I wouldn’t say this is a counseling session so I don’t know if I can explain our relationship,” Kerr said. “But we’re fierce competitors we both want to be the best in the world and that’s not going to change regardless of comments or how the media spins things or how the media takes things out of context. It’s going to create some fantastic races.”
Said Ingebrigtsen “If we take a step back and look at it and it’s good for the sport and blah, blah, blah and whatever. I think all these different things that cause people to create hype or just engagement or causing attention, that’s definitely positive for all of us and for the sport and all involved.
“But it’s definitely a balance.”
But Hoare and others questioned whether the rivalry hasn’t crossed the line.
“I’m mates with them off the track,” Hoare said. “It’s funny because the sport needs it, it needs a bit of (a lift).
“We had Hobbs Kessler on the podcast last week and he’s 21 years old and he had a response that maybe somebody who’s been in the sport for 40 years should have when he talked about when you’re in high school and you come into a system where whatever event you do, whether you’re male, female, non-binary whatever you are, you always have that love and respect from your teammates and competitors,” continued Hoare, who co-hosts the Coffee Club podcast with ON teammates Beamish and Morgan McDonald.
“You always had some sort of feeling of comfort. And Hobbs was ‘I don’t want to lose that.’ I don’t want to lose that. But I want the (expletive) talk. I want the banter. It’s got to hit the right line, it’s got to hit the right audience. I’ve seen Josh back away a little bit. I’ve seen Jakob kind of double dip down into it.
“My resume is not bad. It’s not terrible. Mario’s resume is not bad either, fourth and sixth (at Worlds) as a professional runner. Commonwealth Games is a big deal. But I think a lot of that stuff is all going to depend on how you can handle that pressure.
“Can Josh handle, can Jakob handle it?”
Kerr claimed the bronze medal behind Ingebrigtsen’s Olympic triumph in Tokyo but the rivalry didn’t begin in earnest until the Scot upset Ingebrigtsen at last summer’s World Championships.
Ingebrigtsen claimed afterward he had been ill and dismissed Kerr as “just the next guy.”
“If I hadn’t run in the final, he would probably have won,” Ingebrigtsen said. “That’s how I see the race. Obviously, if you stumble or fall then someone is going to win the race and he was just the next guy.”
A few days later Kerr responded before Zurich’s Weltklasse meet.
“Emotions are high in the media,” Kerr said. “I know he wanted the 1,500 title and the 5,000 field seemed to not realize he’d run three rounds and kind of wanted to make it slow for some reason. But he can be disrespectful to me, that’s fine. I still have the World Championship gold medal and I’m going to be the world champion for the next two years, regardless of his comments. Obviously, I don’t love disrespectful comments and I’ve worked hard to get into this position and I beat him on the day. But if that’s the kind of route he wants to go down, that’s fine with me, I’m kind of unbothered by it.”
The insults continued to fly during an offseason when Ingebrigtsen went on his honeymoon and recovered from an Achilles tendon injury.
“I do think people will start realizing that a little bit now, but I don’t think he will, because the ego is pretty high on this one,” Kerr said during an interview on the “Sunday Plodcast.” “He was paced in 2021 for his Olympic gold medal by (Kenya’s Timothy) Cheruiyot. … If you really look at it, he doesn’t win a lot of non-paced races. I would love for him to be listening to this.
“There was a question asked to him earlier on in the season: ‘Are you worried about the world championship not having a pacer and all this stuff?’ And his answer was, ‘When the pacer drops out, I am the pacemaker.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you have, you have no idea. You’ve won so many races, you’ve run fantastic all season – you must be surrounded by so many yes-men that you don’t realize that you have weaknesses.’ I think that was part of his downfall. If he doesn’t realize that he’s got some real major weaknesses, then he will not win the 1,500-meter gold medal next year. I’m okay with that.”
Kerr also made a lot of noise on the track, shattering four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah’s 9-year-old world indoor 2-mile record with a 8:00.67 clocking in New York and then ran away from Nuguse to claim the World Indoor Championships 3,000 title in Glasgow.
Ingebrigtsen, who holds the world outdoor 2-mile record at 7:54.10, was unimpressed.
“I would have beaten him in that race, blindfolded,” he said of Kerr’s world record during an interview with Norway’s TV2.
Then earlier this month he seemed to respond to Kerr’s comments about Ingebrigtsen’s Olympic victory.
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“I think some people are just (expletive) and being idiots,” he said during an interview on the “Ignite” podcast. “At the end of the day, for me, it’s all about myself and the sport of running and trying to be as good as I can be. I think I am friends with people who share the same thoughts and chase the same goals as me. There are some people that don’t do that.
“I’ve won it before so I don’t know what’s all the fuss about,” he continued laughing. “It’s quite exciting. Obviously, the Olympic Games in Tokyo was very different to the upcoming Games in Paris with no spectators, a lot of testing and rules with COVID. But at the same time, it was a unique possibility for us as athletes to really focus on the competition itself and the things that mattered. There was never that much outside of going to the track to train and prepare and also to go into the competition to compete because we weren’t allowed to do anything else. If I don’t get injured and I don’t get sick, I think it’s going to be a walk in the park.”
Both Kerr and Ingebrigtsen were on their best behavior as they shared a press conference stage with Nuguse on Friday, but the calm seemed only temporary.
“I’m not here to settle tension,” Kerr said. “I’m here to run a fantastic mile that will go down for centuries.”
