If 18-year-old Pennsylvania high school student Gary Martin had recorded his stunning 3:57.98 mile in the 1950s, he would have been the fastest man in the world. The result at the Catholic League championships Saturday was 15 seconds short of the current world record but was still enough to topple numerous other records, as the Archbishop Wood High School student has been doing all year, the Courier Times reports. It was the fastest time in state history and the fifth-fastest ever for a high school runner. The time was also the fastest time in a high-school-only race, breaking the 3:58.3 record set by Jim Ryun in 1965, reports LetsRun.
Ryun, the first high school athlete to run a sub-4-minute mile, went on to set world records in the mile and half mile and took the silver in the 1,500 meters in the 1968 Olympics. Martin, who will run at the University of Virginia this fall, tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that he isn't looking too far ahead. "I mean that was the big one, four minutes, that’s a big barrier for a high school miler," he says. "Now it’s just about getting faster, running as fast as I can, so I wouldn’t say there is a specific time. I'm just going to try and enjoy the rest of my high school career."
Martin and Ryun's sub-4-minute high school runs were also the only ones achieved without the help of a pacesetter, or "rabbit," LetsRun notes. The 4-minute mile barrier has been broken by a total of 14 high school runners, and it is falling more frequently: Two other runners broke it after Ryun in the 1960s, but there was a 34-year gap between Marty Liquori's 3:59.8 mile in 1967 and Alan Webb's record-setting 3:53.43 in 2001. Nine of the 14 sub-4-minute miles have been in the last seven years. (More track and field stories.)
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