phosphorusPerhaps only a sports giant can truly appreciate the excellence of another sports giant. Exactly 70 years ago today, Sir Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in under four minutes, a goal that existed purely in the realm of fantasy until a stormy 1954 race at Oxford One day, he turned that possibility on its head. How good is it? Well, when I asked Sebastian Coe last week to put this into a broader context, he responded: “On every metric, I think it’s arguably as good as any sporting achievement in the last 100 years.” The best among them.
That’s high praise indeed for a man who has been a two-time Olympic champion and broken multiple world records. While the fact that Bannister’s time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds shaved two seconds off the previous world record was shocking enough, that was only part of Coe’s case. “People don’t understand the psychological barriers that he also had to break through,” he points out. “He was a doctor. He would say to me: ‘I once read articles in medical journals that said if someone tried it, they would probably die in the process.’
Coe acknowledged other significant obstacles: Bannister grew up on wartime rations, raced on a cinder track more suited to the speedway than a fast pace, and he wore racing cleats so heavy that decades later, when Coe As he held them, he noticed that one of them was heavier than both of his own.
Bannister, who also holds down a full-time job, laughed when he and Coe compared their training diaries before breaking the mile world record: “I probably did in three days what he did in a week and a half,” Coe said of his close friend.
“He’s very funny privately,” he added. “I remember having tea with him at his house in Oxford and he told me he had Parkinson’s disease. I said, ‘Roger, I’m really sorry, do you have a second opinion?’ He looked at me with complete disdain, Said, ‘Why do I do this? I diagnosed it myself.’ Because he’s a top neurologist.
Before his death in 2018, I had the pleasure of speaking with Bannister several times and reliving that famous day through his eyes. A bowl of porridge for breakfast, a morning in hospital, and an earlier-than-planned train to Oxford. At this point, Bannister feared that gusty winds of 25 miles per hour would force him to abandon the attempt. But by chance, he met his coach Franz Stampfl, who had spent months developing Bannister’s aerobic and anaerobic abilities and now had to work on his Train your mind.
“Copy that, the weather is bad, but even as bad as it is, I think you’re capable of running a mile in 3 minutes and 56 seconds,” Stampfl told him. “If you give up today, you may never forgive yourself for the rest of your life. You will feel pain, but what is it? Just pain.
But he remained undecided. At 5.15pm, 45 minutes before the start of the race, it started to rain and Bannister could feel his pacers Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway ) was growing increasingly annoyed that he hadn’t made up his mind yet. But 15 minutes later, when the wind died down and the flags from the church tower fell, the attempt began.
I remember Bannister telling me that he felt so good on the first lap that he yelled to Brasher to “go faster” even though he flew through the lap in just 57.7 seconds. About how he finished half of the race in 1:58:3, followed by a slower third lap, which meant he needed to finish the final lap in under 59 seconds. Then the adrenaline kicked in and history was made.
“It was as if all my limbs were clamped in an ever-tightening vise,” Bannister recalled in his autobiography. “The blood rushing from my muscles to my brain seemed to knock me over. I felt like an exploding flashbulb. The vision turned to black and white. I knew I had done it before I heard the time.
The four-minute barrier was broken. So are people’s opinions. Six weeks later, Australian John Landy lowered his time again to 3 minutes and 58.0 seconds. Yet Bannister’s campaign still resonates, largely because of the scale of its achievements and the fact that it was filmed by the BBC.
This is also a time when mythical barriers are flown, climbed, and broken. In 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier. Six years later, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered Everest. In 1954, Bannister took office as the new king of the wild frontier. However, due to track and field’s strict amateur status rules, he was unable to benefit financially from this achievement.
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In fact, the rules were so punitive that when the Foreign Office sent Bannister to the United States a week later in the hope that he would strengthen Anglo-American relations, the trip was largely motivated by fears that he might inadvertently do something that might cause him Things that are prohibited from entering the country.
A scheduled appearance on the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company-sponsored game show I’ve Got a Secret was canceled due to concerns that Bannister might be accused of being too professional. He was not even able to collect the Miracle Mile Trophy during his visit because it was worth £180 – well above International Association of Athletics Federations rules which stipulate that a trophy cannot be worth more than £12 if an athlete intends to keep it. So Bannister had to settle for a £11 copy.
As John Russell, head of UK Information Services, told the Manchester Guardian, it’s best not to take any chances. “Maybe at an international meeting, someone else, maybe the Russians or some other country, might question Bannister’s amateur rating.”
But for Bannister, sports are not about the money, but about giving it your all and learning life lessons. As he said: “Sports is about not being wrapped in cotton wool. Sports is about adapting to unexpected situations and being able to change plans at the last minute. Sports, like all of life, is about taking advantage of opportunities.”
Meanwhile, his legend continues. His record-setting Ivley Road circuit will host a series of mile races including Hicham El Guerrouj, Noureddine Morceli at 6pm on Monday Several former world record holders, including Filbert Bayi and Steve Cram, will fly in to pay their respects. “If you stop people on the street and ask them who Roger Bannister is, a lot of people still remember it,” Coe said of the man who took them all the way.
