Millrose
Games

A Department Store Invents a Track Meet

In 1908, the employees of the John Wanamaker department store in New York formed a recreational club and named it the Millrose Athletic Association, after Rodman Wanamaker's country estate in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. The club's winter athletics meeting outgrew every room it was put in: by 1914 it had moved into Madison Square Garden, and it has anchored the New York indoor season ever since. No indoor track meeting anywhere in the world is older.

It has missed exactly one year. The 2021 edition — it would have been the 114th — was cancelled in the pandemic winter, and the Armory that hosts the meet served as a vaccination centre instead. The 118th Millrose Games ran on 1 February 2026 with New York Road Runners' name on the meet and on its signature race, and with that race — the Wanamaker Mile — completing its hundredth year.

One Hundred Years of the Wanamaker Mile

From 1916 to 1925 the meeting's big race was run over a mile and a half. In 1926 the distance came down to the mile, the race took its patron's name, and James J. Connolly won the first Wanamaker Mile in 4:17.2. It has been the spine of the night ever since — the event the whole programme is built around, and the one title that milers collect like championships.

The list of men who collected it in bulk is a history of the mile itself. Glenn Cunningham won six in the 1930s. Ronnie Delany of Ireland, Olympic 1500 m champion in Melbourne, took four in a row from 1956 to 1959 and never lost one. Delany died in March 2026 at the age of 91, a month after the race he once ruled turned one hundred.

Eamonn Coghlan — “the Chairman of the Boards” — won seven between 1977 and 1987 and left the Garden-era meet record at 3:53.0. Bernard Lagat passed him with eight wins, six of them consecutive from 2005 to 2010, and it was Lagat's 3:52.87 in 2005 that finally took down Coghlan's record after 24 years. On the women's side, Mary Cain won at seventeen in 2014, still the youngest champion in the race's history, and the 4:16.41 Elinor Purrier St. Pierre ran in 2024 is the fastest women's Wanamaker yet.

Eleven Laps at the Garden, Eight at the Armory

For nearly a century the race meant one thing physically: eleven laps of a 160-yard oval of wooden boards, banked steeply and only four lanes wide. Eleven times 160 yards is 1,760 yards — one mile, exactly. The arithmetic was tidy and the racing was not: tight bends every few seconds rewarded position and nerve over raw speed, which is why the Garden records moved by tenths across decades, and why the men who mastered the boards kept winning there.

In 2012 the meet moved uptown to the Armory in Washington Heights, home of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and of a much faster banked 200 m synthetic oval — just over eight laps to the mile. What that move was worth is measured in seconds, and the two rings below are drawn to scale.

The Night of 8 February 2025

The Armory era's defining night came at the 2025 edition. Yared Nuguse won his third straight Wanamaker Mile in 3:46.63, breaking the world indoor mile record of 3:47.01 that Yomif Kejelcha had held since 2019 — and the first world record set in the Wanamaker Mile itself in 70 years. World Athletics later ratified the mark.

About an hour earlier on the same track, Grant Fisher had run 3000 m in 7:22.91 — a world indoor record of his own, with Cole Hocker's 7:23.14 in second also inside the old mark. The two records have aged differently. Fisher's 7:22.91 still stood as the world indoor 3000 m record in September 2026. Nuguse's mile record lasted five days: Jakob Ingebrigtsen ran 3:45.14 in Liévin on 13 February 2025, and that is the record today. The meet's habit of producing marks runs deeper than one night — Josh Kerr's 8:00.67 from the 2024 edition is still the fastest indoor two miles ever run.

The Hundredth Year

The centennial edition, on 1 February 2026, refused to follow its script. Nuguse arrived chasing a fourth straight title; he left second. Cameron Myers of Australia, nineteen years old, won in 3:47.57 — the fastest mile in the world that winter and the ninth-fastest indoor mile ever run — to become the youngest winner of the men's Wanamaker Mile in its hundred years, a mark Marty Liquori had held since 1969. Only Mary Cain, at seventeen, has won the race younger. Nuguse ran 3:48.31, Hobbs Kessler 3:48.68, and Nico Young a lifetime best of 3:48.72 for fourth.

The women's race was the duel the meet had hoped for. Nikki Hiltz took a first Wanamaker title in a lifetime best of 4:19.64, holding off Jessica Hull — the Paris 2024 Olympic 1500 m silver medallist — at 4:20.11, with Poland's Klaudia Kazimierska third in 4:21.36.

The undercard carried the rest of the night. Cole Hocker outkicked Josh Kerr in a two-mile sold beforehand as the deepest ever assembled, 8:07.31 to 8:07.68. Doris Lemngole won the women's 3000 m over Jane Hedengren with a collegiate record of 8:31.39. And seventeen-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus broke the world under-20 600 m record with 1:14.58 — seven weeks before he became world indoor champion over 800 m in Toruń, the youngest in the history of the event. His American season, from the Armory to that title, is told in full in our USA 2026 season file.

Sponsor Kit, Not Federation Kit

One detail decides which universe of clothing a night like this belongs to. A championship — a Worlds, an Olympics — dresses athletes in national federation kit. A meeting dresses them in whatever their contracts say: brand teams, training groups, club colours. Nuguse's record run came in the kit of On's Athletics Club — the press release celebrating the mark was issued by the shoe company, not by a federation.

Meeting kit · in the archiveON Running Pro Elite 2025 Women Black Racing ShortsYared Nuguse races for On's Athletics Club, and his three straight Wanamaker wins ended in a world record. This 2025 On racing short is team-issue from that same universe — the sponsor-kit side of the sport, which is exactly what a meeting like Millrose puts on the track.120,00 €View piece →

That is why this page points at the brand wing of the archive rather than at any nation's rail. The stories behind those lines — from Nike Pro Elite to adidas to On — each have their own file in the journal, and the rails below hold one athlete-issued piece from each.