The Vitality Westminster Mile felt echoes of Sir Roger Bannister on Saturday (21 September), as the central London event staged the first sub-4-minute mile in its history.
Joe Wigfield, 24, powered home to break the tape in a staggering new course record of 3:58, having held his own at the front to narrowly edge out James Young and Jacob Cann, who finished second and third respectively (both in 4:01).
To help him achieve the feat, Wigfield was competing in the inaugural British Milers’ Club Bannister Mile – a special wave hosted by the Vitality Westminster Mile for some of the fastest middle-distance runners in the country. Going into the event as the favourite to win – and the person most likely to break the previous course record of 4:00, clocked in 2021 by Chris O’Hare – Wigfield etched his name in history with his sub-4-minute success, which fittingly came in the 70th year since Bannister became the first person to break the elusive four-minute barrier for the mile.
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What’s more, Wigfield’s result on Saturday marked only the 21st time that a person has broken four minutes for the mile on the road.
‘I pushed down and got to the [final] corner and saw the clock and was like, “I want to break four”, as I’ve never broken four before on the track or road,’ said Wigfield, who – thanks to his PB performance of 3:36 in July – is also the eighth-fastest British man over 1500m this year. ‘I just about managed to do it, so I am happy.
‘As soon as I got round the corner, I heard the commentator say, “It could be on”, so I was like, “I’m just going to have to go”,’ he continued. ‘It is good history, the four-minute mile, and everyone wants to try and break that to be part of the club – so it is really good to be able to go and do that on the road. There is a little difference between track and road, so I am really happy.’
Records crumbled in the women’s race, too, with 30-year-old Katie Snowdon smashing the course record by a seismic eight seconds, to finish in 4:23, having been paced to sub-4:30 speed during the race. Dominant and determined from the start, she finished 25 seconds ahead of second-place Lilly Hawkins (4:48), with Hannah Kinane completing the podium in third (4:56).
‘I really enjoyed it!’ said Snowdon, who boasts an indoor mile PB of 4:21.19, which she set at the 2023 Millrose Games in New York. ‘I haven’t done a road mile since New York last year [the 5th Avenue Mile] and haven’t done this one [the Vitality Westminster Mile] since I think 2017, so I wanted to run quicker than I did back then and sub-4:30.’
Snowdon’s spectacular run at the weekend was another fitting tribute to Diane Leather, who became the first woman in history to officially run a sub-5-minute mile 70 years ago. In fact, Leather ran her monumental 4:59 mile only three weeks after Bannister nailed the world’s first sub-4.
Launched in 2013 as a legacy event from the 2012 Olympic Games, the Vitality Westminster Mile enables around 5,000 people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to run, walk, wheel or even waltz the one-mile distance. The carnivalesque event is held on a closed-road circuit in the heart of central London, starting on The Mall and looping around leafy St. James’s Park before finishing at the grand foot of Buckingham Palace.
Each year, the Vitality Westminster Mile is also staged the day before the Vitality London 10,000 – an ever-popular 10K race that sweeps past some of central London’s most iconic landmarks. This year’s race was won by British talents Jack Rowe (29:14) and Eilish McColgan (31:36), both of whom won the 2024 edition of The Big Half a few weeks earlier (Sunday 1 September) as well. At The Big Half – one of London’s leading half marathons – Rowe ran 1:02:35, while McColgan achieved a mighty result of 1:09:14.
