A brief history of the Beer Mile

Informal versions of the beer mile had been kicked around running circles for years, but the sport didn't get a standardized rulebook until 1993, when John Markell crafted the official rules at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. That ruleset is still raced under today, known as the Kingston Rules.

Three years later, in 1996, Patrick Butler created the sport's first informal record repository for the beer mile. Two years after that, in 1998, he acquired the beermile.com domain and formally founded the site as its official results database. What started as a simple way to keep score has grown into the official source of truth for Beer Mile rules, results, and records worldwide — the place every official time, from a local track meet to a world record, gets logged and verified.

In 2015, Nick MacFalls and John Markell launched the Beer Mile World Classic, the sport's official World Championship. Unlike most championships, the World Classic has no permanent home. It travels to a new host city somewhere around the world every year, bringing the world's fastest beer milers together to chase records and titles on a rotating world stage.