Jennifer Lopez says she ran a 4:49 Mile in high school - Did she? Let's find out.

Not sure why people are even obsessing over her mile time for. That has zero significance to her global stardom and success.

Correct it doesn't matter what matters is someone willing to lie to impress someone and getting financial gains from the lie as well (maybe not much financial gain here in Jlo's case but in many others yes). I think most people here are ok with the she implied it was a mile when it was the 1500 but ignoring pathological lying as a society is bad and it's why things like this do "matter"

Best guess: She probably ran a 4:49 1500m in 8th or 9th grade, then became interested in drama/acting and discontinued track later in HS.

4:49 isn't very fast...

4:49 is not fast for a high school 1500, it's just not fast

Some people refer to the 1500 as the metric mile.

She didnt. Shola Lynch was the tip miler of that era

Just the tip

What does that convert to for full mile, 5:09? (Sorry, I ran the 1600 in CA so I don’t know how to compare)

If it’s 5:09 equivalent, that is a stellar time. Not national champion but solid.
Would help explain how she can dance so hard and still looks great.

4:48 * 1.08 = 5:12

Unfortunately she didn’t run a 4:49 1500m either. She was lying

I watched the clip posted, and though it is heavily edited, I had the impression that she meant she ran a 4:49 1500m. Based on the info posted on this thread, I find that claim to be entirely believable. I was impressed she even knew to note the difference between a 1500m and mile!

As an actress, I find the reputation of her acting ability to be wildly under-rated. Sure she was in some stinkers, actually a LOT of stinkers, actually almost all her movies are awful, but most often it's not her acting that brings the movie down (adjusting for the content she is
given). Her acting is usually superior to her co-stars. In certain movies she is amazing – I’d have given her a best actress nomination for Out of Sight over Paltrow in 1999. Often I have no idea why a person is as famous as they are (again, Paltrow), but with JLo there is
no question.

Can't really use this to infer how she would have looked 30 years prior but she's clearly athletic build

The problem is we can’t find any results proving she did this. She did say a mile and that’s a flat out lie. Now to say a 1500m is still a lie. She never ran 4:49 in a 1500m

The 1983 Colgate Women's Games had 22,000 entries. They ran four weekends of prelims and then the top 12 in each event competed in a semi-final the following week. The top six from the semis then competed at the finals in Madison Square Garden. So that photo is showing the top six in the Mid School(grades 6-8) 1500.

Shola Lynch, Nnenna's older sister, is in lane 1. In the prelims she ran 4:44 and 4:38 then 4:36 in the semis with each one a new 13yo national record. She won the final with a 4:48 saying the big crowd made her nervous and that she had a bad race. The article also gave the name of the 2nd place finisher.

Another article giving the Starlets track club results had their runners finishing 3rd and 6th in 4:56 and 5:18. So JLo and Nnenna finished somewhere between those last two times. This race in March 1983 is probably where the Starlets coach spotted JLo and recruited her to join her club. She showed up in their results for the rest of the year.

Do you know it’s nearly impossible to find results online from age group of HS track meets 40+ years ago? I’m the same age as JLo and cannot find results of my high school PRa online. I have some clippings in a folder, but those results don’t exist on the internet. Sometimes you can find state championship results, but not local meets…

And yet your high school PR for 1500 meters was 5:38.

You're an idiot. Non runners don't care and don't know the difference between a 1500 and a mile, and they don't care. Even you americans runners don't most of the time

Typical tall poppy syndrome from males who are devastated that a diva with a lot of 'junk in the trunk' had more potential than them who slog away every day to run faster. Losers

I'm with you. I read the whole thread straight through and appreciate those that did some digging.

Things that I think are more likely than not/takeaways:

She meant the 1500, knows the difference between that and the mile but used a verbal shorthand instead of going into the weeds to explain the difference.

She was a pretty fast kid and, as a lot of girls do, could have recorded her best times in her early teens and not as a senior.

Based on top 1500 times in the country in that era, she would have been good but nowhere near off the charts.

Her body type in the photos is what I would expect to see from a 5:12 miler/4:49 1500 runner.

I see no reason not to believe her. And even if she is off by a few seconds, I would think that is simply that memories get foggy over time. (I've looked up some of my times from 35 years ago and found that I can be off by a few seconds, one way or the other. But admittedly not about my PBs.)