Faith Kipyegon is one of the best athletes in human history. At the age of 22, she won her first Olympic 1,500 metres title, upsetting some of the biggest names in the sport. After taking a year off to have her first child in 2018, she returned to win two more Olympic 1,500-metre gold medals and set the world record for the women’s mile in 2023. Looking for her next challenge, Kipyegon announced this past April that with the help of her longtime partner, Nike, she will attempt to run a mile in under four minutes and become the first woman to do so. However, this event is more than just her next challenge. With longstanding sexism in sports continuing to affect women, Kipyegon’s attempt to achieve the sub-four-minute mile is a historic assertion of female power within sports and beyond.
Currently set for June 26, at the Stade Charléty in Paris, Nike will host and oversee Kipyegon’s revolutionary time trial. The event, called Breaking4, focuses on taking every possible measure to give her the best chance of success as well as the biggest, most enthusiastic audience possible. It will be run in a very similar manner to Nike’s Breaking2 project and the INEOS 1:59 challenge, the latter of which hosted Eliud Kipchoge — Kipyegon’s mentor — in becoming the first human to run a sub-two-hour marathon. The attempt will be a one-mile race against the clock for Kipyegon, while rotated sets of pacers will help her to easily relax into a world-record pace and reduce air resistance. Nike is also engineering a cutting-edge set of track spikes and has worked with Kipyegon to completely optimize both the physical and psychological components of her training. The sportswear company has released extensive articles, webpages and film media in an effort to drum up hype and emphasize the importance and revolutionary nature of the event. The company is even producing a documentary of Kipyegon’s life that will be released on Prime Video on June 20.
After decades of ongoing work to achieve gender equality within running, Breaking4 comes at a time when female runners have many opportunities to flourish and excel. In the realm of professional running, women have long had too little a share of the spotlight. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the bodies that organized events like the Olympics and other professional-level competitions allowed women to enter far fewer, often shorter distances — if at all. When female competitors were finally able to compete in the same range of Olympic distances as the men, they still were widely ignored and disregarded by coaches, fans and male athletes. Even when some of the first female running stars, like Florence Griffith Joyner or Joan Benoit, emerged in the 1980s, male athletes still received the most compensation, fanfare, praise and recognition for their achievements.
Though we are now closer to parity than ever before, discrepancies still exist between male and female competitors in the sport of running. Elite-level coaching — a field still dominated by men — often disregards the physical, emotional and psychological health of female runners. At elite levels of the sport, women often experience eating disorders, depression, malnutrition and numerous other career-threatening problems. Pregnancy has also been seen as a hindrance to the success of female athletes. As such, brands have a record of threatening athletes with pay cuts if they plan to take a season off to have a child. With Breaking4, Nike and Kipyegon are setting out to put women at the center of the story, and to celebrate their capabilities instead of silencing and marginalizing them. Nike’s project team for the event is led primarily by women and is developing specific gear, like an ultra-lightweight new bra and aerodynamic racing suit for Kipyegon. The company is also centering Kipyegon’s motherhood in the narrative, focusing on how it has made her a stronger athlete and individual. This event demonstrates the forward progress that running has made in just the past few years, and exemplifies how female runners should be treated with the highest respect and attentiveness going forwards.
However, it can be difficult to recognize the importance of this moment when over 1,500 different men — albeit at only the highest levels of competition — have run under four minutes since it was first done in 1954. For most competitive running distances, men typically possess certain physical advantages, like potential for higher strength and aerobic capacity, that allow them to perform discernibly better over women. Though there is a clear difference between the physical capabilities of men and women, and will be for the foreseeable future, we must allow ourselves to recognize the greatness that these people can achieve — regardless of sex. Men have been the focal point of this sport for the vast majority of human history, while women have had few moments to shine. The media, fans and a sponsor have never directed this level of attention and resources at/to one female runner. Irrespective of success, this complete devotion to the accomplishment of a woman makes this event extremely important, and it’s made even more revolutionary by the scale of the goal.
But for Breaking4 to leave a long-term impact, the world must turn its gaze to Faith Kipyegon as she steps onto the track later this month. Even though Nike has released copious amounts of media preparing for the event, it will all be for nothing if fans of women in sports and progress toward gender equality don’t watch. Nike will be broadcasting the event live across its TikTok and YouTube profiles for free, with Kipyegon’s time trial planned for 8 p.m. (2 p.m. EST) on the evening of the 26th. So if you’re free, make sure to tune in to support Kipyegon and share in the joy, gravity and excitement of this revolutionary moment.
Willem DeGood is an Opinion Analyst from Traverse City, Michigan. He writes about American social and cultural issues and can be reached at whdegood@umich.edu
