The sub-4-minute mile has remained a magical target for runners, long after metric measurements have replaced English distances on tracks.
Roger Bannister first broke that barrier on May 6, 1954, on Oxford University’s oval in England when timed in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.
It has been relentlessly chased by others ever since, with approximately 1,700 men worldwide succeeding, including 647 at last count from the U.S., according to Trackandfieldnews.com. The present world record 3:43.13 has been held by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj since 1999.
But nobody has ever run the mile in less than four minutes in Delaware, one of e such states with that distinction, according to Bringbackthemile.com.
“We want to remove Delaware from that list,” said Pat Castagno, the Tatnall School track and field coach who galloped more than a few miles as a Salesianum School and University of Delaware distance runner.
That could happen April 9.
Castagno and others have organized the Delaware Mile Challenge, which will award $16,000 in prize money to lure top potential milers.
The event will take place on the 8-lane track at Tatnall, which has recently been renovated with a new all-weather surface and proper drainage plus a video board.
The fastest mile ever clocked in Delaware was a 4:01.1 in 1972 by Morgan Moser, a West Virginia University runner from Washington, Pennsylvania, inside the University of Delaware Field House.
“We want somebody to do it in Delaware,” Castagno said of breaking 4 minutes in the mile.
A similarly organized effort took place in 2020 on the track at St. Mark’s High, where a group of runners led by Charter School of Wilmington graduate Kieran Tuntivate took a shot at eclipsing four minutes in the mile.
Tuntivate, who has run the mile as fast as 3:57.87, was a bit shy in 4:02.21. Tuntivate is a former Ivy League cross country and 3,000- and 5,000-meter track champ at Harvard who placed 23rd in the Olympic 10,000-meter run in Tokyo last summer running for his father’s native Thailand.
Among the April 9 competitors will be Tatnall graduate and Newark native Sam Parsons, who clocked a 3:59.70 mile in 2018.
Parsons has competed internationally for Germany, where his mother Christina is from. The North Carolina State graduate was recently 18th in the 3,000 meters at the World Indoor Championships in Serbia and eighth at that distance in January’s Millrose Games in New York City.
There are other entrants who’ve broken four minutes in the mile before, including former Villanova runner Casey Comber
But the event isn’t just for elite runners. Castagno views it as a celebration of the mile distance, and there are races for those of all ages.
The schedule will be as follows: Middle school boys and girls (5 p.m.); community mile for kids 11-and-under, who may be accompanied by parents (5:15 p.m.); high school girls mile (5:30 p.m.); high school boys mile (6:15 p.m.); open mile, for those 18 to 39 or others not on high school team rosters (7 p.m.); women 40-and-over (7:20 p.m.); men 40-and-over (7:40 p.m.).
The elite races will follow for women at 8:20 p.m. and men at 8:40 p.m. The top five finishers in each race earn $2,500, $2,000, $1,500, $1,000 and $500, respectively.
An extra $500 goes to a man breaking 4:00 and a woman breaking 4:45.84, which is the fastest mile time recorded by a woman in Delaware (North Carolina State’s Suzanne Girard at the Delaware Field House in 1981).
Entry fee is $10 per runner by April 7 and includes a race shirt. Admission cost for spectators is $5.
High school runners competing for their teams should enter at de.milesplit.com. Entry for other events is at www.runsignup.com.
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