Faith Kipyegon Breaking4 attempt confirmed -will go for sub-4 mile in Paris on June 26th

I can't imagine this is possible, but I thought the same thing prior to the first Breaking2 attempt by Kipchoge.

TO THE GILLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!

Breaking pharmaceutical barriers.

Here's the announcement with some details from Nike. They're calling it Breaking4 -- a sequel to their Breaking2 attempt with Kipchoge in 2017.

about.nike.com

Nike Announces Breaking4: Faith Kipyegon vs. the 4-Minute Mile — NIKE, Inc.

Breaking4: Faith Kipyegon vs. the 4-Minute Mile is a partnership between Nike and Kipyegon, who will attempt to become the first woman to run a mile in under 4 minutes, a historic benchmark that was once considered an insurmo...

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Matt Lawton also has an article about it in The Times:

thetimes.com

Faith Kipyegon’s bid to break four-minute mile — with help from Nike

Matt Lawton, Sports News Reporter of the Year

Inspired by Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-two hour marathon, experts have created spikes to maximise effort and aid Kenyan’s attempt to be first woman to break barrier

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No details right now about whether there will be male pacers or whether it will be world-record eligible.

Forget the micro dosing and whatever else she’s on. She needs to pull out the IV bag for this one. WADA pay attention. And while your at it keep a closer eye on Obiri

Breaking 2 worked because Nike developed shoe technology that nobody had ever seen before. Unless something similar is on the way here, I don't think she breaks 4:05

Look, we're all fans of this sport. And the idea that we'd get to see barriers broken like this would be something we should all look forward to. Why else are we keeping records? But given the state of the sport and concerns about doping, how in the world could anyone paying attention really enjoy this if it were to happen?

It's just a bummer that this would be met with a collective "meh" because of what the sport has done to itself.

Is she a fish?

It’s all in the marketing and that round number of 4:00.

She will likely run 4:05-4:10 on the day….but this will pull more mainstream eyeballs than Grand Slam Track and Diamond League combined!

First of all we have to consider her 1,500m WR, which is slightly stronger than the Mile one.

Judging by WA Scoring tables, the 1,500m would be equivalent to a 4:06.5 mile.

That is very significant because it is over a second faster than her mile WR.

She's done that with far from ideal pacing. Here are her splits for each 100m segment:

100m
- 14.4 (14.4)
200m
- 29.7 (15.3)
300m
- 46.1 (16.4)
400m
- 62.4 (16.3)
500m
- 1.17.8 (15.4)
600m
- 1.32.9 (15.1)
700m
- 1.48.7 (15.8.)
800m
- 2.04.0 (15.3)
900m
- 2.19.2 (15.2)
1000m
- 2.32.2 (15.0)
1100m
- 2.49.7 (15.5)
1200n
- 3.04.8 (15.1)
1300m
- 3.19.2 (14.4)
1400m
- 3.33.9 (14.7)
1500m
- 3.49.04 (15.1)

Pacemakers could also have done a better job in her WR, as she was paced only through 800m.

I say that with optimal pacing, that WR could potentially translate to 4:05 mile, perhaps even within 4:04.

Still a monumental attempt though. It would be worth 1347 points in the Scoring table which would make the sub-4 the strongest female track performance. Here below how many points each WR is worth:

100m - 1314
200m - 1308
400m - 1304
100m hurdles - 1272
400m hurdles - 1322
800m - 1286
1500m - Faith Kipyegon (1296)
Mile - Faith Kipyegon (1287)
3000m - 1294
3000m sc - 1285
5000m - 1282
10,000m - 1309
Half Marathon - 1281
Marathon - 1312

Of course these are apples to bananas comparison, but Sydney's remarkable WR in Paris would be equivalent to a 4:03.13 mile, and the remarkable sub-2h10 Marathon, equivalent to a 4:04.41 mile.

In a controlled environment such as this sub-4 attempt will likely be, it would be naive not to believe that Kipyegon is capable of at least a ~4:03 and perhaps even slightly faster if she was able to improve from the top form she's been in the last two years.

My prediction is that she's on pace until opening the last lap, perhaps event at around ~1,300m, but is unable to sustain the pace over the last ˜200m-300m or so, finishing in a ~4:02 - 4:03.

Monumental attempt and very smart move from Nike, very excited to watch this unfold.

Two thoughts . The first that jumped into my head was:

1) Is today April 1st?

Then after a few minutes of thought and a text from weldon:

2) Nike wouldn’t do this to totally embarrass her so they must have something up their sleeve. How ridiculous are the shoes going to be?

If there is some combination of

1) crazy new (probably non-compliant to WA rules) track spikes

2) a big number of pacers in some new ideal formation

3) pacers dropping in and out to maintain the formation

I could see her running 4:02. Sub 4 is still too far

Good point. I imagine they’ll give her some illegal stack height double plated monstrosity. I mean there’s no way this’ll be official for WR purposes so they might as well pull out all the stops like they did with Kipchoge.

At least then they were 1% away. Here, they are 3% away. This is waaay premature. But maybe 4:05/4:05 can come in 2025.

I’m assuming there’ll be male pacers so Nike can just have them run the full mile with her. I’m guessing they’ll recruit some big names. Kipchoge’s pacer group for INEOS was practically a who’s who of legends. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ingebrigtsen, Fisher, or Hocker in there for some extra star power.

Kipyegon is 31 now. If she goes from 4:07 to 3:59 at her age, it will be one of the most blatant exhibits of doping in history.

IS this on the track? On the road? Male pacers? Legal shoes? I assume this won't be a öfficial WR"like breaking 2

I was going to jokingly say she better run in the new Puma shoe. While we know this was in the works already, I wonder if Nike feels the need to steal some attention back from Puma.

Goddess Faith can definitely do it.