The day before Eliud Kipchoge’s first attempt at a sub-two-hour marathon in 2017, a Nike vice-president described it to me as “a moonshot”. Now, though, the track and field equivalent of landing on Mars is apparently just 3min 59.37sec away.
That was the startling conclusion of a study in the Royal Society Open Science journal last week, which predicted that a woman could shatter the four-minute mile barrier with the help of aerodynamics. Not just any woman but Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan Olympic 1500m champion and the greatest female middle distance runner in history.
