By David Monti, @d9monti.bsky.social | (c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved; used with permission
NEW YORK (07-Feb) — Yared Nuguse of the On Athletics Club won the last two editions of the NYRR Wanamaker Mile at the Millrose Games, posting similarly fast times of 3:47.38 and 3:47.83, respectively. The laid-back 25 year-old, who hasn’t competed since last September, would love to get the three-peat here on Saturday at the Nike Track & Field Center at The Armory in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood.
“Coming to this race I really do want a three-peat; and I really do just want to have a really good start to my indoor season and my 2025 season as a whole,” Nuguse said at a press conference in midtown Manhattan yesterday. He added: “I’m still pretty sharp and not just strong. My fall base kind of tells me I’m strong, and then a couple of indoor workouts we’ve done these last few weeks just tell me I’m also fast.”
In the 2023 edition of the Wanamaker, Nuguse shattered Bernard Lagat’s eight year-old national indoor record of 3:49.89, and also broke Ethiopian Yomif Kejelcha’s Armory record of 3:48.46 set at the Wanamaker in 2022. Last year, Nuguse beat Olympic 1500m teammate Hobbs Kessler by 83/100ths of a second, taking over the lead in the second half of the race where he was never seriously challenged.
But in both of his Wanamaker wins, Nuguse did not have to race Scotsman Josh Kerr, the 2023 world 1500m champion and 2024 Olympic 1500m silver medalist. Kerr, 27, competed in the two-mile at Millrose last year, running a world indoor record of 8:00.67. This year, Kerr is running the Wanamaker and Nuguse has adjusted his thinking.
“We race each other a lot of times, a lot of different scenarios,” Nuguse said of Kerr, who sat immediately to his left at the press conference. “At the end of the day, you kind of just have a race of who wants it more in the end.” He continued: “We’re all pretty close in fitness, I’d say, and just generally in how talented we are. So, it’s just a battle of determination really.”
In six head-to-head meetings in the 1500m or mile in 2024, Nuguse and Kerr were tied three to three, according to the respected statistics service Tilastopaja Oy. Kerr finished ahead of Nuguse in the Olympic final, silver to bronze, and also beat Nuguse in the Bowerman Mile at the Prefontaine Classic, first to third, where Kerr set a British record of 3:45.34 and also beat Norwegian star Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
Like Nuguse, Kerr hasn’t raced since last September, and just finished an altitude camp in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his Brooks Beasts Track Club teammates. It’s an annual tradition for the Beasts to head for Albuquerque in January from their Seattle base.
“I think for me I like to race rather sparingly and in events that I can get excited about, and this is one of them I think,” said Kerr, who won the World Athletics Indoor Championships 3000m title last March in Glasgow.
With aggressive pacemaking and the Armory’s new Mondo track surface, fast times are nearly assured. But Kerr doesn’t think that the new surface will be a critical factor in Saturday’s race.
“You get blessed with a lot of amazing tracks, but the atmosphere is the reason that this meet is so good every year,” Kerr said. “I don’t think it’s really the track, but the energy in the stadium, and I think it was the same in Paris. So, I’d expect some pretty big results across the board.”
Besides beating Kerr, Nuguse might have another goal: breaking Yomif Kejelcha’s world indoor record of 3:47.01 set at Boston University in 2019. Nuguse’s 2023 Wanamaker mark is only 37/100ths of a second slower. However, Nuguse said he was more focused on competing well than setting a record, but allowed that it might be in the cards.
“I’ve always been very close to this record, so this year I’m just trying to focus more on winning, especially given the competition in this race,” Nuguse said. “I’m hoping that the record just kind of happens. We’re not going to jinx it.”
