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Photos from Ryan Sterner’s Millrose Games Library

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From the TRACKLND Department of Strength & Conditioning

Written by Intern Tony Romo, during corporate mandated Super Bowl prep time

The 1500 / mile has a gravitational pull on the schedule, lining up all events that come before it like beads on a string, so it is fitting that the famed Wanamaker Mile is always, ceremonially the final event of the afternoon at the Millrose Games.

This weekend marks the 98th running of the Wanamaker Mile, the premier event in the premier indoor meeting in the United States. There are a bunch of gentlemen dressed in tuxedos like penguins standing trackside and ice in a bowl presumably for a tasteful celebration with Dom Perignon, or for them to loosen a collar and lightly cool a brow understandably warmed from the action. This is how God intended the mile to be enjoyed.

The headliner of this year’s mile is none other than American record holder, Yared Nuguse, the second fastest man ever indoors and fourth fastest outdoors. Over the past couple years, the Millrose Games have been circled with a red pen by the On Athletics Club who have made a name for themselves showing up in top-billed, very classy races to steal the spotlight. They are quite possibly the most deliberate, organized and supported team from top to bottom in the world right now. OAC teammates Mario Garcia Romo and George Mills will be in the race as well, two savvy tacticians to balance out Nuguse’s raw monstrous talent. Since the circling of the date, there has no doubt been a working coordinated plan of attack for the high-level racing team, carefully tuned and trained to for the occasion. The biggest statement that could be made would of course be a demolition of the field in a new world record broadcast to the television audiences by the NBC cameras hulking trackside under the upper deck supports- a world record of which Nuguse was .37 shy last year in the Armory.

The devil that could fool with these best laid plans is 20-year-old Hobbs Kessler, who rolled to victory in Boston last week in 3:33 over 2022 world champion, Jake Wightman.

Since Wightman’s upset world championship victory in Eugene, and as a result of the racing style of Jakob Ingebrigtsen- a result of the style of Matthew Centrowitz, more and more racers have put a heavy emphasis on strength training and efforts in the winter, drawing the reigning world 1500m champ, and truculent Beast Josh Kerr to the Millrose 2 mile. Having won the 3000m in upset fashion last year, he will keep the same order heading into the Olympics against a field likely influenced by the shifting training winds, arguably more star-studded than the Wanamaker. Beamish, Klecker, Fisher and Hocker, McDonald and Lumb. Sir Mo Farah’s 8:03 world record is very much in jeopardy.

Wightman and Kerr’s fellow Scot, Laura Muir, previously entered in the Wanamaker, has decided to bump up to the 2 mile to face the OAC’s Alicia Monson. Monson knows success in the Armory well. Having won the 3000m as a collegiate for Wisconsin, she then joined up with the team that places particular emphasis on the meeting, the OAC. Last year, stringing out the field as she does, she set the 3000m American Record of 8:25. Nikki Hiltz, fresh off their 1000m American Record effort and cut from a similar cloth to Wightman as an 800 / 1500 type will take a page out of the Wightman Kerr playbook and jump in for 16 laps. Absent the level of prestige in the slightest to the grand Wanamaker Mile, the winner of the 2 mile will gain clout by taking big names to their trophy case. Even though Monson has been extremely formidable, it seems that anyone other than Muir winning would be an upset, although not as big of an upset as in years past. The Americans are coming… Monson will also have a chance to beat a Scot on home soil and exact a small amount of revenge for the narrow defeat she received by the feet of Eilish McColgan last year at The TEN. The impact of the Scottish people on world distance running is wild. A country of 5.4 million people claims the last 2 world championship 1500m gold medals by different individuals with a bronze medal from 2022 and a silver from Tokyo thrown in by Muir, and now we have to also include the Tokyo bronze from Josh Kerr as well.

The women’s Wanamaker race will be a rematch between Elle Purrier St. Pierre and Jess Hull, who last week went to the line in the 3000m in Boston, Hull eking out the win in 8:24 high and Purrier St. Pierre coming up just shy of Monson’s American Record for second. Those results, along with Hull’s 2:34 1k in Seattle suggest that St. Pierre will step to the line having to defend her meet record of 4:16 from Hull, fit and sharp in the Australian summer. That means another record may go down in defense of the win… the best and most honorable way for records to be broken, he said hat in hand, over heart, head bowed… then softly whispering: “a true champion” gently lifting his gaze to the stars.

All sights are set on Paris this year, and athletes will tell you into corded microphones from a crouch on a stool that this meet, in the grand old Armory in New York City is a stepping stone on the way to the city of lights… and it is, but the cutthroats want to take a win on the boards with them back to their camps in the mountains, because sure as the day is long they want to be the one grinning and gripping a fist of white roses. Up high on the bank while the cameras shutters snap from the infield. There’s a lot of time between now and Paris. Sure is…

Watch: NBC 1-3pm EST (Before the Super Bowl at 6:30pm EST on CBS)