Yared Nuguse is in. The American Olympic bronze medalist has entered the Emsley Carr Mile at the Novuna London Diamond League on July 18, joining Josh Kerr’s attempt on the mile world record, CITIUS Mag reported Monday.
The target is Hicham El Guerrouj’s 3:43.13, run in Rome on July 7, 1999. That was 27 years ago today, and nobody has come within half a second of it since.
Project 222
Kerr, the 2023 world 1500m champion, announced the attempt this spring and gave it a name: Project 222, for the 222 seconds it would take to run a 3:42 mile. He picked London Stadium and its 60,000 fans over a quiet time trial, and he’s controlling the details, down to hand-picked pacers and custom Brooks spikes. The fitness looks real, too: three weeks out, he ripped through 4,000 meters of intervals at world record pace.
“It is the hardest track and field world record right now in my opinion,” Kerr told FloTrack. “That’s stood for the longest time, and there’s a reason for that. It’s not easy.”
He also said he’d welcome rivals into the race, on one condition. “If you want to come into my world and you want to play with my rules, then that’s fine,” he told LetsRun.com.
Nuguse said yes. Awkward detail for Kerr: the American is the faster miler on paper. Nuguse’s 3:43.97 from the 2023 Prefontaine Classic is fourth on the all-time list, less than a second off the record. Kerr’s British record of 3:45.34 sits sixth.
There’s a comeback thread here too. Kerr’s last global outdoor final, at the 2025 Worlds in Tokyo, ended with him limping home 14th on a torn-up calf. He bounced back this winter with a second world indoor 3000m title in Toruń, outkicking Olympic 1500m champion Cole Hocker.
Nuguse is fit
Nuguse arrives in good form. He won the Rabat Diamond League 1500m in a meet-record 3:30.35 in May, becoming the winningest American distance runner in Diamond League history, then took Stockholm a week later in 3:30.11. He’s won two of his three Diamond League 1500s this season.
Last Saturday at the Pre Classic he ran a season’s best 3:46.61 in the Bowerman Mile, second only to Australia’s Cameron Myers, who set a national record of 3:46.06. Nine men broke 3:49 in that race.
And Nuguse knows something about mile records. He broke the world indoor mark with a 3:46.63 at the 2025 Millrose Games. It lasted five days before Jakob Ingebrigtsen took it in Liévin.
The head-to-head
Per CITIUS Mag, Nuguse leads Kerr 4–2 in regular-season 1500m meetings. In global championship finals, though, Kerr is 2–0. Their only prior race over the full mile was the 2024 Pre Classic, billed as the Mile of the Century. Kerr won it, running his 3:45.34 best in the process.
So who does Nuguse’s entry actually help? Probably both of them. The closest anyone has come to El Guerrouj was the 2023 Bowerman Mile, when Ingebrigtsen ran 3:43.73 with Nuguse on his shoulder. Two men pushing each other over the last lap tends to be worth more than any pacing light.
The record demands roughly 55.8 seconds per lap, four times over. The Emsley Carr Mile has been contested since 1953 and has never seen anything like that. On July 18 it might.
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