FILE: ATHLETICS: Roger Bannister , the first man to run a mile in under four minutes is 80

Record ID: 560735

  • Title: FILE: ATHLETICS: Roger Bannister , the first man to run a mile in under four minutes is 80
  • Date: 24th March 2009
  • Summary: BRITISH NEWSPAPER HEADLINES
  • Embargoed: 8th April 2009 13:00
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  • Topics: People,Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVA67PXLM3RVMWGOGA80PB90Y9X3
  • Story Text: Roger Bannister, who celebrated his 80th birthday on Monday (April 23), recently re-visited Oxford's Iffley Road track where he ran the first sub-four-minute mile almost 55 years ago.
    Fate in the form of gale force winds buffeting the modest track at Oxford's Iffley Road was about to dash Roger Bannister's dream of running the first sub-four minute mile.
    Even as the runners shuffled into position on the evening of Thursday, May 6, 1954, the flag of St George on the church steeple overlooking Iffley Road stood at right angles to the pole.
    Bannister, a 25-year-old English medical student, could cope with rain and a sodden cinder track. He could also deal with the chill of the English spring. What he could not handle was a high wind.
    Of all athletics barriers, the four minute mile, four laps of 440 yards in 60 seconds each, has captured the imagination most.
    It was also the quintessential British event, to this day the only imperial distance still recognised for world record purposes.
    Before World War Two, the four minute mile was widely felt to be a barrier too far until two Swedes, Gunder Haegg and Arne Anderson, took turns to slash the world record in the early 1940s, concluding with Haegg's 1945 mark of four minutes 01.4 seconds.
    As the runners took their marks at Iffley Road on May 6 1954, Bannister glanced again at the flag. The wind had dropped and it was now fluttering gently. Bannister made his decision. The record attempt was on.

    "There was a St George's flag on that church steeple and I was using that as an index of how strong the wind was, and it just dropped a little, so I only decided about twenty minutes before that it was possible," recalls Bannister.
    Two university friends had been designated as pacemakers. Chris Brasher, who was to win the 1956 Olympic 3,000 metres steeplechase and founded the London marathon, was in charge of the first 880 yards. Chris Chataway, a future government minister who broke the world 5,000 metres record later that year, was to take over for the crucial third lap.
    After Brasher set the early pace, Chataway brought the field through three laps in a fraction over three minutes, leaving Bannister to run the final 300 yards on his own, noisily encouraged by a crowd of 1,200 who had gathered to witness history.
    Bannister had expended all his physical and mental energies in clocking a hand-timed 3:59.4, collapsing in the arms of his euphoric supporters.
    Newspaper reaction in what had been heralded as a second Elizabethan age following the coronation of the young Queen in the previous year was unrestrained. "There's been nothing to compare with this since the destruction of the Spanish Armada," trumpeted one newspaper.
    In December, 1953, John Landy had opened his southern hemisphere season with a 4:02 mile on a grass track and by April 1954 he had recorded six times under 4:03. In California, Wes Santee was poised to launch a separate assault after his 4:02.4 in the previous year. Landy was planning to run in Europe in the European summer, Santee had the U.S. season in front of him.
    On setting the record in Oxford, May 9, 1954, Bannsiter said, "Throughout the winter I have been watching the newspapers seeing whether Landy would do it first or whether Santee would do it first in America. And I am very glad that it had come from England in the end."
    Landy, the psychological barrier gone, promptly reduced the mark to 3:58.0, also in 1954.
    The likeable Australian, trained like a distance runner in sharp contrast to Bannister who admitted to running on nervous energy and fitted his training into the lunch break between lectures.
    Bannister had planned to retire from serious running well before the spring of 1954. But fourth place in the 1952 Helsinki 1,500 metres final, when he had started as one of the favourites, left him with a burning sense of unfinished business.
    The 1954 Vancouver Empire Games and the Berne European championships were an obvious target after his record-breaking run. It was in Vancouver that Landy who by then had reduced the mark for the mile to 3:58.0 was then outwitted and outsprinted by Bannister in the "Mile of the Century".
    Bannister went on to win the European title and retired satisfied, his mission accomplished.
    Astonishingly his year of athletic triumph had been achieved at the same time he completed his medical degree, the prelude to a distinguished career as a neurologist.
    Bannister does not hesitate when asked what he considers his greatest personal achievement.

    "Oh, my medical career," he said. "Once you have been through a sporting fame phase you realise then how insubstantial it is. It's very fleeting."
    His friend Chataway is recorded as saying Bannister's achievement on May 6, 1954, was "the last hurrah of amateurism".
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