Josh Kerr has broken the long-standing mile world record with a 3:42.66s run at the London Diamond League on Saturday.

This performance was the result of an eight-month build which the Scot branded Project 222, as he wanted to better the 3:43.13s record which Hicham El Guerrouj had held since 1999.

Led by pacemakers Brandon Kidder (his Brooks Beasts teammate) through to 800m, and then Zan Rudolf to 1,000m, he ticked off laps at a metronomic pace: 54.75s, 55.88s and 55.76s to hit the bell.

Kerr crossed the line well before his competitors (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

U.S. record-holder Yared Nuguse was chasing behind him over the final lap, as was Jake Heyward, but Kerr showed supreme speed to win by three seconds and take 0.47s off the world record.

It means that El Guerrouj’s time, which had stood for longer than any previous mile world record, is finally broken.

“That was not me, that was my team every single step,” Kerr said in an on-track interview, a reference to the support that Brooks had given him in developing a bespoke spike and speed suit for this race.

There were six other personal bests in the field, including a German national record for fourth-place Robert Farken (3:46.82s), as nine men broke 3:50s — that feat has only occurred previously at the Prefontaine Classic (Oregon, USA) and the Oslo Diamond League meet.

Kerr covered the first 1,500m in 3:27.62s, an improvement on his British record time from the 2024 Olympic final (3:27.79s), and held his form immaculately to hit the line to the sound of a roaring crowd.

“It is very overwhelming. There was a lot of hype,” Kerr said in the mixed zone. “I am surrounded by amazing people, so I have continued to put the work in, so I knew I had a 3:42 in me. I nearly lost it there at the end, but I got over the line.”

He has repeatedly spoken of the British legacy in the event — he’s the seventh British man to hold the mile world record, and the first since Steve Cram in 1985. “The last lap was incredible. I was deaf in the last 110 meters,” Kerr added.

Elsewhere, Cierra Jackson won the women’s discus with the final throw of the competition, launching a 71.72m effort to beat fellow American Valarie Sion and break the Diamond League record of Sandra Perkovic from 2018 (71.38m), adding nearly four meters to her previous personal best.

“I’m so happy, I definitely wasn’t expecting that, I knew it was in there, just not when it was going to come,” the 23-year-old said in an on-track interview after her maiden Diamond League win. Her throw is the second-furthest this year (behind Sion’s 73.10m in April at Ramona) and she jumps from 66th to 15th on the all-time list.

After going nearly three years undefeated, 15-time world-record pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis was beaten for the second time in two months, finishing second behind Sam Kendricks as he was forced to withdraw through injury. The top four all finished on 5.95m, but the 33-year-old American won due to his superior performance on previous jumps, clearing the heights faster than his rivals.

Keely Hodgkinson won the final event of the day, the women’s 800m, in a time of 1:56.21s — 25 hundredths ahead of the Netherlands’ Femke Broeders-Bol — six weeks after setting a new British record at the discipline in the Stockholm Diamond League in a time of 1:54.33s.

London Diamond League men’s mile top five
Josh Kerr (Great Britain) — 3:42.66s
Yared Nuguse (USA) — 3:45.69s
Jake Heyward (Great Britain) — 3:46.73s
Robert Farken (Germany) — 3:46.82s
Nathan Green (USA) — 3:48.05s