Former Whanganui runner Geordie Beamish cracks his first sub four-minute mile at North American meet

Former Whanganui athlete Geordie Beamish moves up the world rankings with his first sub-four-minute mile. Photo / North Arizona University Athletics

Former Whanganui athlete Geordie Beamish has run his first ever sub-four-minute mile at the 11th NYRR Millrose Games in the United States.

The Northern Arizona track and field team's current and future talent was on display at the games, with senior Beamish and incoming signee Nico Young shining bright on Saturday in the world's premier international indoor meet.

In the meet's grand finale, the historic Wanamaker Mile, Beamish set a new personal-best in the indoor mile with a time of 3:56.90. His time on Saturday crushed his previous PB set at the NCAA Indoor Championships last season by nearly 10 full seconds and was almost two seconds better than his altitude-converted time of 3:58.17 last month.

Beamish, the reigning indoor mile national champion, placed sixth overall in the Wanamaker Mile behind the second-fastest split (56.69) in the final 400 metres.

Only Chris O'Hare, this year's Wanamaker Mile champion, ran a faster last quarter-mile (56.66) by three-hundredths of a second. Beamish's final kick pushed him up from ninth to sixth at the finish line.

"The race went out slower than anticipated, so right away the dynamic of the race changed," said assistant coach Jarred Cornfield.

"Geordie did a really good job of navigating the race and in a month, he's going to feel a lot better after more training. He executed and competed really well. He closed well and I was really happy with the way he embraced the competition and he ended up beating some of the best guys in the world."

Among those that Beamish outkicked were Filip Ingebrigtsen, a world championship medalist, and Eric Jenkings, the 2017 Wanamaker Mile champion, who finished seventh and eighth respectively.

Prior to Beamish's performance in the mile, Young broke the national high school record in the 3000m run with a time of 7:56.97. Young, the nation's top 2020 cross country and distance recruit, broke the previous record of 7:59.33 by almost two and a half seconds as he became only the second athlete to ever run sub-eight minutes in the 3km indoors.