Jojo Jourdon, a senior at Olympus High, beat an international field to win the mile at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix Saturday in Boston. In the process, he broke the sub four-minute-mile barrier.
Jourdon, who will attend Wake Forest in the fall, was clocked in 3:59.87 and finished well clear of the field. America’s Drew Griffith was second in 4:02.71 and Great Britain’s Corey Campbell was third in 4:04.10. Danny Simmons, a senior from American Fork High, was 11th in 4:18.29.
Only 21 high school athletes have ever broken the four-minute mark (a total of 36 times), only six of them indoors. Of those 36 sub-four miles, 14 have occurred since 2020, a phenomenon that is credited to the arrival of the so-called “super shoes.” From 1964 to 2001, only three managed to run sub-fours.
Jourdon becomes the first Utah high school runner to break the four-minute mile.
For Jourdon, the sub-four mile comes a couple of months after he won the most prestigious race in high school distance running — the Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Oregon.