This Is the Fastest Man in History

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Sep 27, 9:22AM EDT · Published Sep 26, 9:48AM EDT

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This Is the Fastest Man in History — © Ian Waldie / Getty Images

Defining “fast” when it comes to human running can be broken into three segments. There will always be debates about whether “fastest” should be defined over short, medium, or long distances. The most often used short distance to judge speed is for the 100-meter sprint which takes as little as 10 seconds, the one-mile run which takes under four minutes, and the marathon where the fastest runners can finish in slightly more than two hours.

For centuries, it was widely believed that no one could run a mile in less than four minutes. The barrier was broken on May 6, 1954, when 25-year-old Roger Bannister covered the distance in 3:59.4.

It would seem easy to calculate the amount of time it takes to cover a mile. However, the measure has not been without controversy. Wind speed can affect race times. Trailing winds can improve times. As a matter of fact, some records are not official if wind speeds are high enough.

The fastest mile run in history was by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco on July 7 1999 in Rome. His time was 3:43.13. The mile was run outdoors. He also holds records in the 1500 meters and 2000 meters. He has run sub-3:46 miles on five other occasions–1998, 1997, 2001, 1997 and 2000.

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Hicham El Guerrouj was born on September 14, 1974, in Berkane, Morocco. He is 5 feet, 9 inches tall. Throughout most of his career, he weighed about 130 pounds. He won two Gold Medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics. One was for the 1,500 meters and the other for the 5,000 meters. According to the BBC:

But it wasn’t until the 2004 Games in Athens that he won gold in the Olympic 1500m. In this final he was described by commentators as running the perfect 1500m race. He returned to the track to win gold in the 5000m, the first man since Paavo Nurmi in 1924 to win both Olympic title.

He retired in 2006.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.