Gender ideology loses at 4 minutes
As male runners crowd Parkrun’s female category, the four-minute mile offers a simple truth overtakes trans claims
This summer, Scotland’s Josh Kerr smashed the men’s mile world record in London, running 3:42.66 on 18 July. That is a useful reminder, amid the perennial row over male participation in women’s sport, that sex matters.
The argument is not confined to elite stadiums. Every Saturday, Parkrun records male runners in its female category, flattening women’s achievements in an event that insists it is merely a community run. Yet times are logged, rankings are published and women’s results plainly matter to the women who earn them. On 3rd October, Reality Rules Runners UK will make its Parkrun debut, inviting runners to show just how much support there is for fair, sex-based categories.
It is remarkable that shills for the Gender Borg still argue that LARPing men should take part in women’s sport, despite the advantages men enjoy being obvious to anyone who gives the question five minutes’ thought, or watches men’s and women’s sport.
Consider the four-minute mile. A four-minute mile is a mile, or 1.609km, run in four minutes or less. It was first achieved by Roger Bannister, aged 25, who ran 3:59.4 at Oxford’s Iffley Road track on 6 May 1954. His pace-makers, Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, deserve credit too.
At least 2,300 men have since run a sub-four-minute mile. Kerr is now the world-record holder, after his 3:42.66 run in July.
No female athlete has yet run a four-minute mile. The official women’s world record is 4:07.64, set by Faith Kipyegon in Monaco on 21 July 2023.
Kipyegon did run 4:06.42 in a specially staged Nike attempt in Paris last year, aided by male pace-makers, but it was not eligible for record ratification. Even the greatest female miler in history, in a bespoke attempt with male pace-makers, remains more than six seconds from Bannister’s 1954 mark.
Seventy-two years after Bannister’s historic achievement, the four-minute mile remains beyond the reach of the fastest female athletes.
Dusty is a retired solicitor. She hit peak trans in 2019 and, in 2023, started a Substack reporting TERF news from around the world: Dusty Masterson.