INTRODUCTION From The Sports Time Traveler™
Last week’s story was about a golfer I idolized growing up - Johnny Miller - and whether or not Miller was the first to break the 60 barrier on the PGA TOUR - what some thought was impossible. You can read or listen to that story here:
1974 - Johnny Miller Shoots 59 - or Did He?
Today’s story is similar.
It’s about another of my all-time favorite athletes - Roger Bannister - who unequivocally did break a barrier that was previously thought impossible - the four-minute mile.
Bannister’s autobiography, “Four Minute Mile,” is the only autobiography I’ve ever read 3 times. He was a brilliant man, an Oxford graduate who became a celebrated neurologist. Bannister was more proud of his contributions to the field of medicine than he was of the four-minute mile.
But the four-minute mile made Roger Bannister world famous in 1954, at a time when track & field was one of the most widely followed sports.
The Sports Time Traveler™ was a competitive track & field athlete for over 40 years and my favorite event was the mile. While I never got below 4:20, I did stick around in the sport long enough to win the silver medal in the 1500 meters at the World Masters Games in 2005 at age 41. Prepping for that race I had been inspired by reading Bannister’s autobiography for the first time.
Naturally, I had to go back in time virtually this week, precisely 70 years, to May, 1954, to see Bannister’s first official attempt at the four-minute mile.
Oxford, England - May 6, 1954
I’m here at the Iffley Road Track in Oxford on a virtual trip to England to see if Roger Bannister can become the first man to break four minutes for the mile.
BACKGROUND
Ever since John Landy of Australia clocked a 4:02.1 mile in Australia on December 13, 1952, the sports world has been in a tizzy over whether the four-minute mile could be broken.
Landy had smashed the Australian record by 7 seconds. But he hadn’t set a new world record. That still belonged to Gunder Haegg of Sweden who had run 4:01.4 in 1945.
While most of the athletics world had been on pause for the duration of World War II, track competitions were still going on in neutral Sweden where Haegg and fellow Swede Arne Anderson had alternated in lowering the mile world record 6 times from 4:06 to 4:01 between 1942 - 1945.
After the war, the 2 great Swedes were declared professionals which effectively ended their track careers and any pursuit of the four-minute mile as track & field at that time was strictly an amateur affair.
Athletics in the rest of the world had been stunted by the devastation of the war and took years to get back in shape. But as 1953 began, Landy, who hadn’t even reached the 1952 Olympic Final, had put the four-minute mile on notice.
It was just a matter of time - literally.
In London, Roger Bannister, England’s top miler, who had finished a close 4th in the 1952 Olympics, suddenly found the goal he needed to inspire him to continue training while in medical school. In his autobiography he wrote, “the four-minute mile had become rather like an Everest, a challenge to the human spirit.”
On June 27, 1953, at the Motspur Park track in London, Bannister arranged to run a mile during a Surrey Schools track meet. Bannister knew that on this day several hours later in Dayton, Ohio, Wes Santee of the University of Kansas was going to make an attempt to run a sub four-minute mile at the National AAU Track & Field Championships. Santee had run 4:03.7 just a few weeks earlier at the Kansas Relays.
Bannister devised a brilliant but perhaps devious team strategy for his mile. Two world class runners paced him. Don McMillan led for the first two laps, and pulled Bannister through the half mile in 1:59.7. McMillan led for another half a lap before retiring from the race.
Then Chris Brasher, who had intentionally jogged the first two laps, and purposely fell exactly a lap behind, suddenly sped up to pace Bannister over the final lap of the race. Bannister reached three-quarters of a mile in 3:01.8. Bannister now needed a last lap of 58.1 seconds to break four minutes.
He ran 60.2 on the last lap and finished in a time of 4:02.0.
It was the fastest mile in the world since Haegg (4:01.4) and Anderson (4:01.6) during the war.
Even though Bannister had not broken four minutes, the sports world was on fire with the news.
The Sunday New York Times on June 28, 1953, had the story on the front page of the sports section with a headline, “Bannister 4:02 Third Fastest Ever.”
The Sunday People, a London paper, had Bannister on page one. Their story began, “Roger Bannister, the 24 year old London medical student, brought the four-minute mile nearer yesterday.”
Wes Santee meanwhile only managed 4:07 in Dayton.
Bannister’s Mile is Banned
Less than a week later, Bannister’s 4:02 was stricken from the record books. The British Amateur Athletic Board discredited the race as not being a bona fide competition, and officially Bannister’s time did not count.
But Bannister had actually run 4:02 flat and he now knew that a sub-four minute mile was possible for him.
In his book Bannister wrote, “After this irregular attempt I realized two things. In the first place, only two painful seconds separate me from the four-minute mile, and I was certain I could cut down the time. The second was that I knew the attempt would be meaningless unless it was achieved in a bona fide race.”
Medical studies got in the way of training however, and Bannister ran out of time to run the four-minute mile in 1953 as track season doesn’t go past August in Europe.
In Australia though, track season gets underway in the Fall, and John Landy had increased his training to 20+ miles per day. But his increased mileage didn’t drop his times. By early 1954, Landy had run 4:02 six times, but no faster.
Landy’s lack of competition in Australia made it difficult for him to run faster. After one of his 4:02 efforts on January 22, 1954 he was quoted in In The Age, a Melbourne newspaper, “I could have done better if there had been someone there to flat out beat me.”
In the February 10, 1954 Sydney Morning Herald a frustrated Landy was quoted about his inability to get below 4:02, “It’s like a brick wall.”
In America, Wes Santee, who had gotten down to 4:02.4 in 1953, was being run into the ground in the spring of 1954 by head track coach Bill Easton at the University of Kansas. Easton relied on Santee to compete in multiple events all spring to earn points towards winning track meets. Easton cared about winning track meets not setting records.
This left an opportunity for Bannister.
Near the end of 1953, Bannister had started training in London as part of an informal team with Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, 2 of England’s best distance track runners.
Bannister did not use a coach, although he did consult with Brasher’s coach Franz Stampfl. But it was Bannister who designed his own training program, treating his workouts like science experiments. Due to his severe time constraints as a medical student, he also maintained low mileage and focused on high quality intervals.
In his book Bannister writes, “In December, 1953 we started a new intensive course of training, and ran several times a week a series of ten consecutive quarter-miles, each in 66 seconds. Through January and February we gradually speeded them up keeping to an interval of two minutes between each.”
In a March 14, 1954 article in the New York Times, Gunder Haegg predicted that Bannister would be the one to break the four-minute mile because, “Bannister has brains… he doesn’t overtrain.”
But Bannister notes that he hit his own barrier in the early spring of 1954.
“By April we could manage them (the ten quarter-miles) in 61 seconds but however hard we tried it did not seem possible to reach our target of 60 seconds. We were stuck.
Roger decided to take a break from training. He and Chris Brasher went on a hiking trip to Scotland. As he described it, “The weekend was a complete mental and physical change… We climbed hard for the four days we were there… There was an element of danger too… I remember Chris falling a short way… We suddenly became alarmed at the thought of taking any more risks.”
Bannister and Brasher returned to London and they immediately had a breakthrough in their training. As Bannister described, “When we tried to run those quarter-miles again, the time came down to 59 seconds.”
This was the confidence builder Bannister desperately needed. Now he could visualize running the four-minute mile.
He finalized his plans to run his first mile race of the year on May 6th, at the very same track at Oxford where he had run his first competitive mile and had run many times in his years as a student.
He also gained the agreement of Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway to run in the mile with him.
Unlike the sham mile Bannister had run the prior summer in London, this one would be an official event in an official track meet and with no shenanigans. Bannister, Brasher and Chataway would be running for the AAA (the British Amateur Athletic Association) against a team from Oxford.
Now Bannister shifted his training to a series of time trials. In his book he wrote, “I now abandoned the severe training of the previous months and was concentrating entirely on gaining speed and freshness. I had to learn to release in four minutes the energy I usually spent in half an hour’s training.”
He ran several half-mile and three-quarter mile time trials in the last couple of weeks of April.
On April 14th, he ran a three-quarters in 3:02.
On April 24th he ran another three-quarter time trial with Chris Chataway at the Motspur Park track in London in 3 minutes flat.
And then came the last three-quarter time trial on April 28th at a track in Paddington in London. For this one his good friend Norris McWhirter came to the track to time him.
NOTE From The Sports Time Traveler™
I interrupt this article to inform you that Norris McWhirter, and his twin brother Ross, were fellow Oxford graduates of Bannister. They ran as sprinters on the track team.
They also co-founded the Guinness Book of World Records in 1955.
Now back to 1954.
Bannister placed significant importance on this final time trial at Paddington, near St. Mary’s Hospital, where he was in medical training. In his book he wrote, “I felt that 2 min. 59.9 sec for the 3/4 mile in a solo training run meant 3 min 59.9 sec in a mile race. A time of 3 min. 0.1 sec would mean 4 min. 0.1 sec for the mile - just the difference between success and failure.”
McWhirter timed Bannister in precisely 2:59.9!
Bannister now knew the four-minute mile was achievable.
The Race at Oxford
The mile run on May 6, 1954 was going to take place as part of a dual track meet between Oxford and the AAA (the British Amateur Athletics Association). Bannister, Brasher and Chataway would all be running for the AAA. The meet would take place at the Iffley Road Track in Oxford, where Bannister had run countless times when he was a student at the university.
Outside of England, few sportswriters knew of this meet.
In the USA, not a single newspaper had any pre-meet coverage.
Speculation in America had been that perhaps the four-minute mile could be broken at the National AAU meet in late June. The Manhattan Mercury newspaper in Kansas on April 19, 1954 indicated that the field at the AAU meet would include Wes Santee and other international stars including possibly Bannister, and 1952 Olympic champion Josi Barthel.
In Canada, the newspapers were focused on what might take place in the west coast province of British Columbia in mid-summer. On April 26, 1954, the Hamilton Spectator in Ontario, Canada speculated that the four-minute mile might be broken at the British Empire Games, which were set to start in Vancouver on July 30th, since it was likely that Roger Bannister and John Landy would race head-to-head in that meet.
The first mention of the meet at Oxford in any newspaper was not until the Liverpool Daily Post in England wrote about it in a brief article on April 30, 1954. The headline on page 8 was simply, “Fast mile likely at Oxford.”
Four days later on May 4, 1954 the Evening Post in Nottingham, England noted that, “Either Bannister or Chataway or both may get somewhere near the world record of 4:01.4,” at the Oxford track meet.
On the day of the race, Bannister writes in his book about his mindset of the day of the race, “In my mind I had settled this as the day when, with every ounce of strength I possessed, I would attempt to run the four-minute mile… I had reached my peak physically and psychologically. There would never be another day like it. I had to drive myself to the limit of my power.”
The race on May 6th was broadcast live by BBC Radio. The radio announcer was 1924 Olympic 100 meter champion Harold Abrahams.
NOTE From The Sports Time Traveler™
I interrupt this article once again as I wish to inform you that Harold Abrahams was the featured character in the movie, “Chariots of Fire,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1981.
Now back once more to 1954.
The race went off as scheduled at 6:00 pm on a blustery day - May 6, 1954.
The stadium announcer for the race was Norris McWhirter.
You can watch the race as I experienced it in this video, which is actually narrated by Roger Bannister.
Brasher led for the first 2 laps with Bannister right on his heels. Shortly after the half-mile mark, Brasher gave way to Chris Chataway who took over the pacing after the first turn of the 3rd lap and kept right on going through the first turn of the final lap.
Bannister then burst past Chataway at the the top of the backstretch on the last lap and drove hard all the way to the finish line.
My favorite part of the tape is at the 3:50 mark on the video when Bannister, who was now nearing the final turn, says, “I felt the moment of a lifetime had come.”
Bannister thrust himself through the finish line and then appeared to be in a total state of exhaustion. In his book he writes, “My effort was over and I collapsed almost unconscious.”
The Announcement of the Winning Time
A short while after the conclusion of the event, Norris McWhirter’s voice boomed from the stadium’s loud speaker:
“Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event nine, the one mile: first, number forty one, R. G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which—subject to ratification—will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire and World Record. The time was three...”
As the crowd heard the word, “three,” which was the first occasion in history that the time of any mile race had ever started with the announcer saying, “three,” the noise in the stadium rose to a deafening level and completely drowned out McWhirter’s voice.
The Manchester Guardian described the scene, “there was pandemonium among the spectators.”
Roger Bannister had done it.
3:59.4!
Bannister had smashed the barrier. He had proven the four-minute mile was possible.
Chataway had finished 2nd in 4:07.2.
Tom Hulatt, also running for the British AAA team finished 3rd, in 4:16.
Hulatt told the Evening Telegraph, in Derby England, that Bannister had come up to him in the locker room prior to the race and told him, “Don’t bother to try and keep up with Chris and myself, we’re going all out.”
Hulatt is a miner who gets up at 5:30am every morning and runs the four miles to work and then runs home four miles in the evening. Hulatt told the Evening Telegraph, “If I hadn’t got a cold I think I would have been on Chris Chataway’s heels.”
Chris Brasher, who had reduced to a jog after he had finished his pacing duties in the middle of the 3rd lap, finished in 4th place. His time was not mentioned in any newspaper results of the race.
Once Bannister had recovered he writes in his book that, “I grabbed Brasher and Chataway and together we scampered around the track in a burst of spontaneous joy. We had done it - the three of us. We shared a place where no man had yet ventured, secure for all time, however fast men might run miles in the future.”
Today’s Newspaper Accounts
Today, Friday, May 7, 1954, news of Bannister breaking the four-minute barrier was on the front page of nearly every major newspaper in the English speaking world including the The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Los Angeles Times, The London Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Sun and The Ottawa Citizen.
The entire back page of The New York Daily News had a banner headline, “Runs 3:59.4 Mile,” with a sub-heading, “Bannister First to Shatter 4:00.”
The New York Daily News story on the race called Bannister’s mile, “the greatest feat in track & field history.”
The New York Times front page article spoke of Bannister’s mark in the type of terms that might have been expected had Bannister been the first man to walk on the moon. Drew Middleton, in a special to The Times, wrote that Bannister had achieved, “one of man’s hitherto unattainable goals.”
The London Daily Mirror reflected Britain’s pride as their front page headline read, “4-minute mile - it’s OURS.” The article proudly proclaimed it, “The greatest achievement in athletics history.”
The Birmingham (England) Evening Mail page 1 headline read, “World Congratulations for Roger Bannister.” The article noted, “Congratulations to Roger Bannister are pouring in from sportsmen and trainers all over the world… telegrams were arriving at his home at a one-a-minute rate.”
An AP article that ran in newspapers across America included the time splits for every 220 yards of the race:
28.7 at 220 yards
57.5 at 440 yard (one-quarter mile)
1:27.5 at 660 yards
1:58.2 at 880 yards (one-half mile)
2:29.6 at 1100 yards
3:00.5 at 1320 yards (three-quarter mile)
3:30.5 at 1540 yards
3:59.4 at 1760 yards (one mile)
The London Daily Mirror reported that a re-measurement of the track taken for official records purposes showed that the track actually measured one mile and two inches.
After the race, the Jack Crump of the London Daily Telegraph spoke with Bannister about the race. Bannister described how the wind was so strong before the race that he and others were questioning whether the attempt should be made at all on this day.
Bannister then decided as he told Crump, “I thought myself, however, that here was a chance to do it, and although I felt pretty tired at the end I knew that I would just about make it. The wind may have cost the runners some seconds.”
Medical Studies Take a Back Seat to Celebration
Following the breaking of the four-minute barrier, the trio of Bannister, Brasher and Chataway participated in a night of merriment consistent with the magnitude of their accomplishment.
The London Evening Standard reporting corps followed them and detailed their late night partying.
The all caps headline on page 5 read, “BANNISTER AND HIS PACEMAKERS GO DANCING UNTIL DAWN.”
The article started, “At five o’clock this morning Roger Bannister, the four-minute miler was crooning Time on My Hands into the microphone at West End club.”
The Evening Standard article indicated that Bannister, Brasher and Chataway, accompanied by thee women, “Started at the Chelsea Club, went on to the night club… the band stopped playing and the club officially closed at 3:30. But the bandleader and drummer stayed on to play for the three athletes and their partners. There was champagne for them from their host.
Bannister was quoted, “We live normal lives. A late night champagne now and then doesn’t hurt.”
Medical student Roger Bannister and his friends Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway had certainly earned a night on the town in London.
NEW YORK - May 12, 1954
I am now in New York, virtually, it’s been 6 days since Bannister became the first man to run a mile in under four-minutes. Here is here by request of the British Foreign Office who requested that he visit America to share the experience of his historic achievement.
You can watch Bannister’s humble TV appearance in this rare video:
Bannister was gracious and humble about his four-minute mile. He said, “I happen to have a particular shape and physique and happen to have been lucky. There’s no particular merit to it.”
POSTSCRIPT From The Sports Time Traveler™
Roger Bannister’s life could never be described as normal after May 6, 1954. The name Bannister has become somewhat synonymous with breaking the barrier for the four-minute mile. His feat is widely regarded as one of the greatest sporting moments of the 20th century.
Roger Bannister retired from running after the 1954 track season. He dedicated himself to medicine and became a world renowned neurologist.
John Landy eventually broke 4 minutes for the mile later in 1954. Landy and Bannister met in the British Empire Games that summer. I am looking forward to covering the event in a few months on another virtual trip.
Wes Santee never made it under 4 minutes although he got tantalizingly close.
On June 4, 1954, just 4 weeks after Bannister broke 4 minutes, Wes Santee broke the world record for the 1500 meters in a time of 3:42.8 at the Compton Invitational in Los Angeles on his way to completing a mile race.
That was a faster time than Bannister came through 1500 meters in his sub-4 minute mile race on May 6, 1954.
And Santee also beat the reigning Olympic champion Josi Barthel in the race.
But Santee slowed down over the last 100 meters and finished the mile in 4:00.6.
The Sports Time Traveler™ Meets Wes Santee
A little more than 50 years later, in December, 2005, I had an unbelievable opportunity to sit at the same table as Wes Santee on the night that he was inducted into the USA Track & Field hall of fame.
I didn’t recognize Mr. Santee when he arrived with his wife for the dinner that preceded the ceremony. Since he was an elderly gentleman, and the room as noisy, I got up from my seat on the opposite side of the table and walked over to him to introduce myself.
When he told me his name my jaw must have dropped open. I was stunned. I quickly collected myself and said, “It’s an honor to meet you sir.” He was as nice a man as you could imagine.
I made sure I applauded the longest and the loudest when he was brought up on stage. It was an incredible moment. And best of all I got to share it with my son, who accompanied me that night and now has a picture of himself with one of America’s greatest milers and the man who almost became the first man to break the four-minute barrier.
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