Jemma Reekie Breaks the Fifth Avenue Mile Event Record

Jemma Reekie ran 4:13.8 down Fifth Avenue on Sunday to win the 45th edition of the Fifth Avenue Mile, the fastest mile anyone has run in the event’s history, on a road still wet from a morning of heavy rain.

The mark she took down had stood since 2022, when Laura Muir ran 4:14.8 on the same 20 blocks. Karissa Schweizer matched that time in 2024 without beating it, and it survived last year too, when Gracie Morris won in 4:15.5. Reekie went a full second under.

Rain had been falling on the city since around midnight, 1 to 2 inches of it, and the National Weather Service kept a flood watch over the metropolitan area through Sunday morning, CBS New York reported. The professional women went off at 12:30 p.m., with the road wet and the worst of the weather just gone.

Reekie has now won this race three times, after 2021 and 2023. Only Jenny Simpson has won it more often, and New York Road Runners recorded her eighth title in 2019 as a race record. The 28-year-old Scot spends most of her year over 800m, where she took fifth in the European final in Birmingham this summer and fifth again at the London Diamond League in July. She was 10th in the mile final at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in August. Her mile best before Sunday was the 4:17.88 she ran indoors in 2020, which World Athletics still lists as the British record at the distance.

The Women’s Race

Josette Andrews came through for second in 4:16.1 and Rachel McArthur was third in 4:17.7. The rest of the top 10 finished in a heap: sixth through ninth were covered by less than a second, and Elise Cranny held off Melissa Courtney-Bryant for eighth by a hundredth.

1. Jemma Reekie 4:13.8
2. Josette Andrews 4:16.1
3. Rachel McArthur 4:17.7
4. Bérénice Cleyet-Merle 4:18.3
5. Lindsey Butler 4:19.1
6. Susan Ejore-Sanders 4:20.2
7. Adelle Tracey 4:20.4
8. Elise Cranny 4:20.9
9. Melissa Courtney-Bryant 4:20.9
10. Jessica Kain 4:23.1

The Men’s Race

Marco Langon won the men’s race in 3:45.0, the second-quickest winning time the event has produced, behind only the 3:44.3 Josh Kerr ran here in 2024. Langon is 22, he ran for Villanova until this spring, and he signed his first professional contract with Diadora in July. His 1,500m best of 3:32.69 dates from the same month.

He beat Jake Heyward, who arrived with the fastest mile credentials in the field, by 0.79 seconds. Adam Spencer was a hundredth of a second behind Heyward in third. The first eight men finished inside three seconds of each other.

1. Marco Langon 3:45.0
2. Jake Heyward 3:45.8
3. Adam Spencer 3:45.8
4. Drew Hunter 3:46.5
5. Flavien Szot 3:46.9
6. Cooper Teare 3:47.3
7. Sam Prakel 3:47.6
8. Gary Martin 3:47.9
9. Romain Mornet 3:49.0
10. Abel Teffra 3:49.4

A new men’s champion was guaranteed before anyone lined up. Yared Nuguse, who won last year, did not enter, and neither did Kerr, who took the mile world record down to 3:42.66 in London in July and holds the record on this street as well. That left a field with no previous winner in it.

Around the Professional Races

New York Road Runners put 8,600 runners down Fifth Avenue across the day, in heats that started at 7:25 a.m. and worked through age groups, youth races, wheelchair and handcycle divisions and separate fields for the NYPD, the FDNY and the media. Athletes from 12 countries filled the professional heats, among them 15 Olympians and 18 medalists from Olympic Games and world championships, racing for $5,000 a win. Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS got its second Broadway Mile, a heat of more than 100 people who work in theater.

Fourteen of the 50 professionals entered on Sunday are due in Denmark next weekend for the world road running championships in Copenhagen on Sept. 19 and 20, where the mile is one of the three championship distances alongside the 5K and the half-marathon. Nuguse is on the entry list for the men’s mile there.