Kenyan will do well to beat her current women's world mile record of 4:07.64 in Paris this week

At the 50th anniversary celebration of Roger Bannister’s sub-four-minute mile in 2004 I was lucky enough to sit next to the world’s first female sub-five-minute miler, Diane Leather, at a special function at Oxford University.

Following her groundbreaking 4:59.6 in Birmingham in 1954, she had seen the women’s mile record tumble to 4:12.56. And, as we spoke, that time by Svetlana Masterkova had stood for eight years.

I asked her whether we might see a woman break four minutes any time soon and she shrugged dismissively: “I don’t think so. If it does happen, it’s a long way off yet.”

When Leather died in 2018, aged 85, Masterkova’s mark still survived as the No.1 performance by a woman. In 2019, though, Sifan Hassan improved the record to 4:12.33 and then, in 2023, Faith Kipyegon improved it to 4:07.64.

Now, this week, the 31-year-old is hoping to threaten the four-minute barrier during a time trial in Paris. Like fellow Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge, who famously ran a sub-two-hour marathon in Vienna in 2019, she has joined forces with Nike in an effort to create an historic barrier-breaking performance.

I was in Vienna for Kipchoge’s 1:59:41 and I remember being far more optimistic about his attempt than Kipyegon’s “Breaking 4” mile. The marathon man had already run 2:00:25 in Monza two years earlier, so he “only” had to find 26 seconds over 26.2 miles. In comparison, Kipyegon has the far more challenging task of finding almost eight seconds over just four laps of the track.

In an interview with Nike last week, Kipyegon revealed she has been praying a lot. She will need it. Nike has provided her with a state-of-the-art "Fly Suit" and new shoes – the Victory Elite FK – and she is expected to have a number of male pacers shielding her all the way to the finish. But will it be enough to help her break four minutes?

Even the team of sports scientists from the University of Exeter who have been analysing her physiology believe she has her work cut out to get close to four minutes.

In an academic paper published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, they write: “To our knowledge, there is no female athlete presently displaying the endurance parameter ratio, or other physiological characteristics, required to run a sub four-minute mile.

“Moreover, 800m performance amongst the world’s best women presently appears insufficient to suggest that a sub four-minute mile is imminent.”

One of the physiologists, Professor Andy Jones, was a record-breaking long distance runner himself in his youth and ran a mile in 4:05. When I asked him what single thing he would change if he could have his time again in an effort to get closer to 4:00, he said straight away: “My training.”

Interestingly, Kipyegon says that she hadn’t changed her training for the sub-four-minute mile attempt. As world record-holder for the mile and 1500m – the latter with 3:49.04 – in addition to being a three-time Olympic and three-time world champion at 1500m, she is clearly not doing much wrong training-wise. But she still has to find almost eight seconds and, in the words of British Milers’ Club founder Frank Horwill, “she who trains the same, remains the same”.

Apparently she is a relative novice when it comes to taking the fashionable bicarb supplement. She has also, I hear, not really used the warm-up technique of 'priming' much in the past, which involves runners doing a short race pace effort before they compete. Still, will these additions be enough to get her inside four minutes? I doubt it.

As reigning world 5000m champion and former world record-holder at the distance, not to mention two-time world junior cross-country champion, Kipyegon has terrific endurance. But her 800m best of 'only' 1:57.68 suggests that she doesn't quite have the speed to run a four-minute mile. In short she will be too close to being flat out when she passes halfway in 1:59.

She has also only raced once this year so far, with 2:29.21 for 1000m on April 26, missing Masterkova's world record of 2:28.98. Bear in mind in Paris she will have to hit that pace and maintain it for a further 500m.

As a club runner, I ran 1:54.0 for 800m. I was slightly faster than British record-holder and Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson (1:54.61) but slower than world record-holder Jarmila Kratochvílová (1:53.28). Yet I narrowly failed to break four minutes in the 1500m, let alone the mile, whereas my mile best was a mere 4:19 on the roads.

"Breaking 4" has generated a lot of publicity for the sport with, among other things, an Amazon Prime series about the athlete and her challenge. Don't be sucked into the hype, though.

Kipyegon is probably the greatest female miler in history, but she will do well this week to break her own world record of 4:07.64, let alone give the four-minute barrier a scare.

Still, it will be a fascinating experiment. Also, I believe a sub-four-minute mile for women is possible, but as the University of Exeter team suggest, it could very well happen the next decade but not necessarily right now.