James Milner’s marathon time beats benchmark in football comparison

James Milner completed the New York City Marathon in 3hr 9min 4sec, according to The Guardian’s football questions column, The Knowledge. The reported performance puts him ahead of the fastest runner listed in the newspaper’s earlier comparison of footballers’ marathon times, but does not establish whether another footballer has run faster.

The column describes the former Brighton, Liverpool and Manchester City player as having spent the early months of his retirement preparing for the race. At 40, he covered the course at a reported average pace of 7min 13sec per mile, adding a distance-running achievement to his football career.

Milner suggested he believed a faster performance might have been possible earlier in his career. “A few years ago, I feel like I could have definitely done sub-3:00,” he said, according to the column, which reports that he felt injuries late in his playing career had hindered him.

That assessment distinguishes his actual finishing time from the target he thought he could once have reached. His reported result was just over nine minutes outside three hours; the excerpt offers no earlier marathon result against which to test his belief that he could have broken that barrier.

The historical comparison comes from a Knowledge column published in 2012, which listed footballers’ fastest marathon performances. Former Leicester playmaker Muzzy Izzet headed that selection with a time of 3hr 22min 36sec at the 2011 London Marathon, providing the benchmark revisited in the new article.

Milner’s reported finish is 13min 32sec quicker than Izzet’s listed performance. That is a clear improvement on the earlier column’s leading mark, although the two times came from different races and years. The comparison establishes their relative finishing times, rather than a head-to-head result under the same conditions.

The distinction matters because the article’s headline asks whether a footballer has ever run a marathon faster than Milner. The supplied excerpt introduces that investigation but stops before presenting the wider field of runners or its conclusion. It therefore supports a comparison with Izzet, not a definitive claim that Milner holds football’s fastest marathon time.

The Guardian says the performance prompted it to revisit the subject and examine more marathon-running footballers, including men and women. Its broader review is the next step in answering the headline question. On the evidence available in the excerpt, Milner has surpassed the newspaper’s previously listed benchmark, while his place in any wider ranking remains unresolved.