Roger Bannister

Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister CBE (born March 23, 1929) is a British former athlete best known as the first man to run the mile in less than four minutes. Bannister became a distinguished neurologist. He was born in Harrow, London, England.

Education

Bannister was educated at the City of Bath Boys' Grammar School, University College School, London, Exeter College and Merton College, Oxford, and at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School (now part of Imperial College London).

The 4-minute-mile

This historic event took place on May 6, 1954 during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University at Iffley Road track in Oxford. It was watched by about 3,000 spectators. With winds up to 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) prior to the event, Bannister had said twice that he favoured not running, to conserve his energy and efforts to break the 4-minute barrier; he would try again at another meet. However, the winds dropped just before the race was scheduled to begin, and Bannister did run. His time was 3 min 59.4 s. Two other runners, Chris Brasher, and Christopher Chataway, provided pacing; both went on to establish their own stellar track careers. The announcer for the race was Norris McWhirter, who went on to publish and edit the Guinness Book of Records.

Bannister's record-setting mile run was called the "Miracle Mile" because some doubted a four-minute-mile was physically possible for a man to achieve.

However, the claim that a four-minute mile was once thought to be impossible by informed observers was and is a widely propagated myth cooked up by sportswriters and debunked by Bannister himself in his memoir, The Four Minute Mile, 1955. The reason the myth took hold was that four minutes was a nice round number which was slightly better (1.4 seconds) than the world record for nine years -- longer than it probably otherwise would have been because of the effect of World War II in interrupting athletic progress in the combatant countries. Note that the Swedish runners Gunder Hagg and Arne Andersson, in a series of head-to-head races in the period 1942-45, had already lowered the world mile record by 5 seconds to the pre-Bannister record. See World record progression for the mile run. See also A World History of Track and Field Athletics, 1864-1964 by R.L. Quercetani, Oxford University Press, 1964 for a history of the mile/1500 m. event. What is still impressive to knowledgable track fans is that Bannister ran a four-minute mile on very low-mileage training by modern standards.

Just 46 days later on June 21 in Turku, Finland, Bannister's record was broken by his rival John Landy of Australia, with a time of 3 min 58 s.

On August 7, at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, B.C., Bannister competed against Landy for the first time. They were the only two men in the world to have broken the 4 minute barrier, with John Landy still holding the world record. Landy led for most of the race, building a lead of 10 yards in the third lap (of four), but was overtaken on the last bend, and Bannister won in 3 min 58.8 s, with Landy 0.8 s behind in 3 min 59.6 s. Bannister and Landy have both pointed out that the crucial moment of the race was at the moment in which Bannister decided to try and pass Landy, Landy looked over his left shoulder to gauge Bannister's position, and Bannister burst past Landy on the right, never relinquishing the lead. A larger-than-life bronze sculpture of the two men at this moment was created by Vancouver sculptor Jack Harman in 1967 and stood for many years at the entrance to Empire Stadium; after the stadium was demolished the sculpture was moved a short distance away to the Hastings and Renfrew entrance of the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) fairgrounds.

Bannister went on that season to win the "metric mile", the 1500 m, at the European Championships in Berne on 29 August, with a championship record in a time of 3 min 43.8 s. He then retired from athletics to concentrate on his work as a junior doctor and to pursue a career in neurology.

Bannister was the first recipient of Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award. He later became the first Chairman of the Sports Council (now called Sport England) and was knighted for these services in 1975. Under his aegis, central and local government funding of sports centres and other sports facilities was rapidly increased, and he also initiated the first testing for use of anabolic steroids in sport. He became Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, retiring in 2001.

Training anecdote

As a medical student at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, Roger Bannister chose to use his lunch hour for a 9 minute jog to Paddington track, where he ran 10 X 400 m in about 60 s with two minutes rest, then he ran back to work. The whole procedure took 46 minutes, leaving him 15 minutes to eat his lunch.

Legacy

On the 50th anniversary of running the four minute mile, Bannister was interviewed by the BBC's sports correspondent Rob Bonnet. At the conclusion of the interview, Bannister was asked whether he looked back on the four minute mile as the most important achievement of his life. Bannister replied to the effect that 'no, he rather saw his subsequent forty years of practicing as neurologist and some of the new procedures he introduced as being more significant'. His major contribution in academic medicine was in the field of autonomic failure, an area of neurology focusing on illnesses characterized by certain automatic responses of the nervous system (for example, elevated heart rate when standing up) not occurring.

Sir Roger Bannister is the subject of the ESPN movie "Four Minutes" (2005). This movie is a dramatization, its major departures from the factual record being the creation of a fictional character as Bannister's coach, when this was actually Franz Stampfl, an Austrian, and secondly his meeting his spouse, Moyra Jacobsson, a few years before the Miracle Mile, when in fact they met afterwards.

The 50th anniversary of Sir Roger's achievement was marked by a commemorative British 50 pence coin. The reverse of the coin shows the legs of a runner and a stop watch.

References

The First Four Minutes: ESPN Classic Television Program
The Perfect Mile: The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It, by Neal Bascomb, 2004, ISBN 0618391126
The Four Minute Mile by Roger Bannister, 1955. Revised and enlarged 50th anniversary (of the race) edition, 2004, The Lyons Press.

Roger Bannister | Roger Bannister | רוג'ר בניסטר | Roger Bannister | Roger Bannister

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Education

The 4-minute-mile

Training anecdote

Legacy

References