World record: What’s the fastest women’s mile time ever?

The mile run has progressively trickled down in its world record time over the years, but which woman currently holds the world record for this middle-distance running event?

The mile run is something we’ve all had to do at least once in P.E. class. The target goal for the average person was a sub-eight to nine-minute time and that constituted as a decent number for someone to show their endurance and fitness as it applied to running. But at the pro and Olympic level, an eight or nine-minute time wouldn’t even get you to qualifiers.

The average mile run time at the competitive level, particularly for women, rounds up to a sub-four-minute time. Before the inception of the IAAF, the first record for the mile run was at 6:13.2 minutes. Pretty slow for running around a track four times compared to modern standards. But in the post-IAAF era, the times are much faster and better, more accurate records are kept.

So, what woman holds the title for the world record in the mile run category?

Sifan Hassan holds the women’s world record with a time of 4:12.33 minutes. Hassan is a middle-distance runner from the Netherlands, where she was the 1500m world champion in 2016 and the world record holder in the 5km run. At the 2019 Herculis event in Monaco, Hassan entered herself in for the mile run, where she went on to make history, breaking the previous record of 4:12.56. The last record, held by Svetlana Masterkova, had stood untouched for 23 years.

Hassan doesn’t hold any Olympic hardware. But this year in Tokyo, she looks to change that in the 1,500m, 5,000m, and 10,000m according to World Athletics.