Fiftieth anniversary of the first sub-four minute mile

Roger Bannister

Sweden's Gunder Haegg's 1945 world mile record (4:01.4) had stood for nine years. Nevertheless, by 1954 there was excitement in the air. The world boasted of a new breed of "can do" athletes: Bannister, Christopher Brasher (3000 meters steeple chase) and Christopher Chataway (5000 meters) of England, who were in intense competition with John Landy of Australia and Wes Santee of the US. There was a sense that the barrier was about to be broken. It was not known at that time that Roger Bannister weight-trained built his muscles by training with weights, something Tiger Woods introduced to golf forty years later. Athletes, who were mostly students, were truly amateurs in those days. Studies, in Bannister's case medical studies, came ahead of running. Bannister knew that 1954 would be his last year in track. He decided to make the most of it.

As The New York Times reported recently: "On the morning of his big race, Bannister went to St. Mary's Hospital in London (70 miles from Oxford.) After completing a few duties, he sharpened his spikes on a grindstone in the hospital's lab, then took an early train to Oxford. When he arrived, gusty winds were whipping up leaves on campus. He and Chataway discussed postponing the attempt at the record. As Bannister lined up with five other runners for the start a few minutes 6 p.m., he noticed that the flag on the nearby St. George's church had began to flutter more gently as the wind died down. He told the pacemakers, Brasher and Chataway, that the sub-four minute attempt was on. Brasher went right for the lead and Bannister settled effortlessly behind him. Brasher ignored Bannister's urging to go faster, and took the field through a 57.5-second first quarter. Perfect pace. After the half way split of 1:58, Chataway took over as planned and brought the crowd of some 1000 to a full-throated roar. He led Bannister through the three-quarter mark in 3:00.7. On the backstretch Bannister swept by Chataway, accelerating into the cool, damp evening. "I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do something supremely well," Bannister wrote in the "First Four Minutes," his autobiography." After bursting through the finish line Bannister collapsed into the arms of the track officials. "I felt like an exploded flashlight," he recalled.

What happened next was narrated to the writer by Sir E. T. Williams, the Warden of the Rhodes House who was in charge of the Rhodes Scholars at Oxford, when the writer met him for the first time in the early 1970s. The announcer for the meet was Norris McWhirter, one of the brewery Guinesses, who co-founded the Guinness Book of (World) Records a year later in 1955. (Mr. Norris McWhirter died last week.) McWhirter announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event No. 9, the one-mile. First, No. 41, R. G. Bannister of the Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which, subject to ratification, will be a new English native, British national, British all-comers, European, British Empire and world record. The time is three minutes…" and the crowd's roar drowned the rest of McWhiter's announcement, Sir E. T. Williams recalled. Bannister's time was 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. A few months later, in the Mile of the Century, Bannister beat John Landy in 3:58.8 at Vancouver, Canada. After winning a European championship gold medal in the 1500 meters the same year, Bannister quietly retired to become a physician and researcher. The British took their time in honouring him. Bannister was knighted twenty years later in 1974. I still remember one his comments: human beings as we know them should not be able to run faster than 3:30. Sir Roger also recalled that when he met his future wife Moyra, a few weeks after his historic sub-four minute mile, she knew nothing about the sport. "She thought I had run four miles in one minute, and she wasn't much impressed," he said.

Within six weeks, on June 21, 1954, Bannister lost the record to his bitter rival, John Landy of Australia (3:58.0), never to regain it. Landy's record stood for three years before Britain's Derek Ibbotson lowered it to 3:57.2 on July 19, 1957. Australia used to dominate all sports in the 1950s and the 1960s, and therefore it was no surprise when Aussie Herb Elliot, the writer's high school hero and the 1960 Rome Olympics' 1500 meters champion, reclaimed the title for Australia on August 6, 1958 (3:54.5) for the last time. New Zealand's double gold medallist (800, 1500 meters) at the Tokyo Olympics, Peter Snell, dominated middle distance running in the early 1960s. Snell lowered the mile record twice, first to 3:54.4 (January 27, 1962) and then to 3:54.1 (November 17, 1964). France's Michael Jazy claimed the title on June 9, 1965 (3:53.6) and kept it for a year before America's Jim Ryun smashed it by over 2 seconds (3:53.3) on July 17, 1966. Jim Ryun, who was the writer's running role model in the university and is currently a Republican congressman from Kansas, kept the title for ten years, lowering it once again on June 23, 1967 to 3:51.1. To date, Jim Ryun remains the only American world record holder in the mile.

On May 1975, Tanzania's Filbert Bayi ("Good Bayi") became the first non-white to hold the mile world record by lowering Jim Ryun's record to 3:51.0. In less than three months, on August 12, 1975, New Zealand's John Walker (winner of the 1500 meters at the 1976 Montreal Olympics) became the first runner to break the 3:50 in the mile, by taking the record to 3:49.4. A few years ago, John Walker achieved another outstanding feat - he celebrated his one hundredth sub-four minute mile! Between 1979 and 1981, Britain's bitter rivals, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, broke the world record in the mile five different times! Seb Coe claimed it on July 17, 1979 (3:49.0), only to be bumped off by "Brighton Express" Ovett a year later on July 1, 1980 (3:48.8). Coe won the 1500 meters and Ovett the 800 meters at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which the United States boycotted as a protest for the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (thus denying a young Carl Lewis and the 400-metres hurdler Edwin Moses of sure gold medals.) Fans feasted on the bitter rivalry and the one-upmanship of Coe and Ovett, when in the course of only ten days in August 1981, they broke the world mile record three times! Seb Coe kicked off the track hostility by smashing Ovett's one-year-old record on August 19, 1981 (3: 48.53). (Notice that beginning this date, times were reported up to one hundredths of a second.) Ovett responded by reclaiming the record a week later on August 26, 1981 (3:48.40). Not to be outdone, Seb Coe went really low and broke Ovett's record by over a second (3:47:33) only two days later on August 28, 1981. Englishman Steve Cram lowered the record to 3:46.32 at Oslo on July 27, 1985, a telecast the writer was fortunate enough to watch live from Princeton.

For the last fourteen years the world's most prestige track record has belonged to North African Arab Muslims Noureddine Morceli of Algeria (winner of the 1500 meters in the1996 Atlanta Olympics) and Hicham el-Guerrouj of Morocco. On September 5, 1993 at Rome, Morceli broke Cram's record by almost two seconds (3:44.39) an astounding feat. Six years later, on July 7, 1999 also at Rome, el-Guerrouj lowered it by another 1.3 seconds (3:43.13) an equally outstanding feat. If all the legendary mile runners were running together and recording their personal bests, Hicham el-Guerrouj would finish 25 yards ahead of Steve Cram, 45 yards ahead of Seb Coe, 61 yards ahead of Jim Ryun, 85 yards ahead of Herb Elliot, and a full 120 yards ahead of Roger Bannister! To put this in perspective, the best runners in Bangladesh in the 1960s and the 1970s, such as the writer, covered the mile in four minute and 30 seconds. Which means that we would have been about180 yards behind Bannister and about 300 yards behind Hichan el-Guerrouj! In the mile (1610 meters), which requires the runners to start 10 meters behind the start/finish line and to go around the 400-meter track four times, this is like being lapped! We must say in our defense that we ran on the notoriously slow grass track, and in Dhaka-made running shoes so uncomfortable that I could not wait to take them off! Roger Bannister ran on a cinder track at Oxford in shoes that represented the best technological expertise of Britain. Hicham el-Guerrouj runs on the lightening fast Mondur tracks with custom-made running shoes that embody the latest technological advancements.

In the early 1970s, the writer was fortunate enough to run and compete on the same Iffley Road track at Oxford University that Roger Bannister had made so famous. To be honest, Roger Bannister was the last thing on the writer's mind. I was far more impressed with the red, springy Tartan track, which was so much superior to the grass track we ran on in Bangladesh. We would hop on our bike, go to Iffley Road track, practice, hop on the bike again and either go to the house (Christ Church in my case) or my lab. When we returned to England in 1998 we found things very different. The Iffley Road track had been fenced off and entry controlled by cards. We took photographs of our two sons, aspiring runners, standing next to the plaque that commemorates Roger Bannister's monumental feat. Our sons also trotted on the hallowed track. Plastered on the walls of the stand and the adjoining office buildings were enlarged newspaper clippings not of Bannister's, but of of Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett's exploits of the early 1980s.

Kenya's legendary Kip Keino (1967) and his son Martin Keino (1996) are the only father and son duo to have run sub-four minute miles. Among the many brothers to accomplish the feat, (along with the year of their best performance) are Algerians Amar Brahmia (1981) and Abdenacer Brahmia (1989) and most famously, Abderrahmane Morceli (1983) and Noureddine Morceli (1993). Approximately, four-minute mile barrier has been broken 4,700 times thus far by 955 runners. Fourteen record holders have set nineteen world records in the sub-four minute mile. Still, the mystique of the sub-four minute mile remains. The track world had gone metric, except for the mile and the marathon (26 miles, 385 yards). Just as a sub-four minute mile is still a tremendous achievement for an elite runner, the completion of the marathon is a superb achievement for ordinary runners. The writer was fortunate enough to complete the New York City Marathon four times in a row (1992-95). He noticed that although the winner of the marathon wins a Mercedes and cash, everyone - the first to finish and the last to finish - receives the same "Finishers Medal." This is to acknowledge that anyone who finishes the marathon has subjected himself or herself to the limits of his or her physical capabilities - for human beings are not supposed to be able to run 26.1 miles and came out victorious! I have no doubt that every sub-four minute miler feels the same way, every time they accomplish the feat.