The Emsley Carr Mile is an annual invitational athletics running event held in the United Kingdom over one mile for men. The race is now part of the London Grand Prix, and was won in 2010 by the Kenyan athlete Augustine Kiprono Choge.

The race was inaugurated in 1953 by Sir William Carr in memory of his father Sir Emsley Carr, a former editor of the News of the World. The event was created to encourage athletes to break the four-minute mile. By the second time the race was run, Roger Bannister had already broken the world record on 6 May 1954 at the annual athletics event between the Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) and Oxford University at the Iffley Road Track in Oxford. Bannister never did run in the Emsley Carr Mile.

The winners of the race write their signatures in the pages of the Emsley Carr Trophy, a red Moroccan leather-bound book, now running into a second volume since 1980. It contains a history of mile running since 1868 from around the world and also includes signatures of many of the world's leading milers, including Paavo Nurmi, Sydney Wooderson, John Landy and Roger Bannister. The race has been won by ten Olympic champions, Kip Keino, Steve Ovett, Murray Halberg, John Walker, Sebastian Coe, Saïd Aouita, William Tanui, Vénuste Niyongabo, Haile Gebrselassie and Hicham El Guerrouj. It has also been won by seven athletes who have held the world record for the mile: Walker, Ovett, Coe, El Guerrouj, Filbert Bayi, Derek Ibbotson and Jim Ryun.

Sir William Emsley Carr (1 May 1867–5 August 1941) was a British newspaper editor, who edited the News of the World for more than fifty years.

Carr was born and raised in the Hunslet district of Leeds. His uncle, Lascelles Carr, was a founder and editor of the Western Mail, based in Cardiff, and he saw promise in Emsley, and summoned him to work as a journalist on the newspaper. In 1891, Lascelles was part of a syndicate which purchased the News of the World, a London-based Sunday newspaper with a small circulation, and he decided to appoint his nephew as its new editor.

Emsley married Lascelles' daughter, Jenny Lascelles Carr, in 1895, and worked closely with George Riddell to build up sales of the News of the World. This was highly successful; by 1900, the paper was selling more than one million copies of each issue. Carr also continued to write for the Western Mail, acting as its chief political correspondent until the 1930s, using his membership of the Parliamentary lobby to obtain stories.

James Ronald ("Jim") Ryun (born April 29, 1947) is an American former track athlete and politician, who was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1996 to 2007, representing the 2nd District in Kansas. In the 2006 election, Ryun was defeated by Democratic challenger Nancy Boyda. In the Kansas Republican primary on August 5, 2008, he was defeated by Kansas State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins.

Years prior to his political career, Ryun had an athletic career that saw him become a world-class runner and the last American to hold the world record in the mile run. His career was highlighted by many world record times and a silver medal in the 1500 m at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

In 1966, at age nineteen, Ryun set world records in the mile and the half-mile runs, and received Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award, as well as the James E. Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete, the ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year, and was voted Track & Field News' Athlete of the Year as the world’s best track & field athlete. Ironically, Ryun did all of this before he was permitted to run for the school he attended, University of Kansas, since NCAA rules at the time did not allow freshmen to compete in NCAA competition. In 1967 Ryun ran a world record in the indoor half mile (1:48.3) and outdoors lowered his world-record time in the mile from 3:51.3 to 3:51.1, a record that stood for almost eight years. That same year he set the world record for the 1500 meters in 3:33.1, running his last lap in a blazing 53.3 seconds and his final 1,200 meters in an amazing 2:46.6.

Sydney Charles Wooderson MBE (30 August 1914 – 21 December 2006), dubbed "The Mighty Atom", was an English athlete whose peak career was in the 1930s and 1940s. He was one of Britain’s greatest middle-distance runners and had an amazing sprint finish. His slightly built and bespectacled appearance disguised immense reserves of strength and an overwhelming turn of speed.

He set the world mile record of 4min 6.4sec at London’s Motspur Park on 28 August 1937. This record stood for nearly five years.

Born in Camberwell, London, he was 5 ft 6 in and weighed less than 9 stone (126 lbs). He attended Sutton Valence School, Kent. At 18 he became the first British schoolboy to break 4min 30sec for the mile. He won the British mile title for the five years up to the outbreak of the war in 1939.

In 1934 he won the silver medal in the one mile event at the British Empire Games.

At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, he suffered an ankle injury and failed to qualify for the final of the Men's 1500 metres. However, in 1937, after surgery, his performance increased and culminated in his world mile record of 4min 6.4sec in 1937. In 1938 he set world records in the 800 m and 880 yards with times of 1min 48.4sec and 1min 49.2sec respectively.

Edwin Corley Moses (born August 31, 1955) is a former American track and field athlete, who won gold medals in the 400 m hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. Between 1977 and 1987, Moses won 107 consecutive finals (122 consecutive races) and set the world record in his event four times. In addition to his running, Moses was also an innovative reformer in the areas of Olympic eligibility and drug testing. In 2000, he was elected the first Chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, an international service organization of world-class athletes.

Moses was born in Dayton, Ohio. Having accepted an academic scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, he majored in physics and industrial engineering, while competing for the school track team. Morehouse did not have its own track, so he used public high school facilities around the city to train. Initially, Moses competed mostly in the 120-yard hurdles and 440-yard dash. Before March 1976, he ran only one 400 m hurdles race, but once he began focusing on the event he made remarkable progress. His trademark technique was to take a constant 13 steps between each of the hurdles, pulling away in the second half of the race as his rivals changed their stride pattern. That summer, he qualified for the US team for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. In his first international meet, Moses won the gold medal and set a world record of 47.63 seconds.