Simeon Birnbaum runs 3:31.69 at Hayward Field, a collegiate 1500 m record by a second
Paced through 1100 m by a teammate, the Oregon junior closed in 53.59 and took more than a second off Liam Murphy's 2025 collegiate record.
Photograph: Hayward Field, University of Oregon, Eugene, where Birnbaum set the record, by Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsSimeon Birnbaum ran 3:31.69 for 1500 m at the Oregon Team Invitational at Hayward Field on Saturday, a collegiate record. The old mark was 3:33.02 by Villanova's Liam Murphy in March 2025. Birnbaum's own best before this was 3:37.02, run last May.
It was about 70 degrees in Eugene with no wind. Teammate Tomas Palfrey led through 1100 m in 2:38.10 and stepped out, and Birnbaum ran the last 400 m alone in 53.59. He won by seven seconds; Oklahoma State's Brian Musau was second in 3:39.27, with three more Ducks behind him.
Birnbaum, 20, is a junior from Rapid City, South Dakota. He was seventh in the NCAA outdoor 1500 m last June and the NCAA indoor 3000 m silver medallist this winter, and two weeks before this he had won the 5000 m at the Stanford Invitational in 13:19.73. He missed nearly all of his freshman outdoor season injured; the clip of him ice skating on a frozen Hayward Field during the 2024 ice storm is how most people first heard his name.
Hayward Field has seen a lot of fast 1500s, but a college kid running 3:31 in April with a pacer and no one else in the picture is new. The run also put him among the fastest in the world this year.
The sport has a habit of making records look inevitable afterwards. This one was not. He went from 3:37 to 3:31 in one race.
Sources: Lookout Eugene-Springfield; USATF; Daily Emerald.
