Roger Bannister
1929 -2018
Breaking the four minute mile
The obituary for Sir Roger Bannister that appeared in last Saturday's New York Times began as follows:
On the morning of May 6, 1954, a Thursday, Roger Bannister, 25, a medical student in London, worked his usual shift at St. Mary’s Hospital and took an early afternoon train to Oxford. He had lunch with some old friends, then met a couple of his track teammates, Christopher Chataway and Chris Brasher. As members of an amateur all-star team, they were preparing to run against Oxford University.
About 1,200 people showed up at Oxford’s unprepossessing Iffley Road track to watch, and though the day was blustery and damp — inauspicious conditions for a record-setting effort — a record is what they saw. Paced by Chataway and Brasher and powered by an explosive kick, his signature, Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes — 3:59.4, to be exact — becoming the first man ever to do so, breaking through a mystical barrier and creating a seminal moment in sports history.
The obit goes on to describe how Bannister accomplished what was thought up until that time to be beyond human capability - run a mile in under four minutes. I don't suppose that people living today, and I include myself in this, can truly comprehend the enormity of what Bannister accomplished in Oxford on that 1954 afternoon. However, if you followed sport back in those days, and I can remember my Dad talking of this over the years, you certainly appreciated the enormity of what Bannister had done, which was The Impossible.
I can imagine that most of the current day world had no idea of who Sir Roger Bannister was when news of his death at age 88 was announced over the weekend. Such is the nature of the passage of time, and 24 hour news cycles of the 21st century. If the name meant nothing to you, look up and read an obituary for Roger Bannister that appeared in any number of sources of the weekend. The NYT piece from which I quoted above is a good one, but there are others. It makes for extraordinary reading.
In 1955, not long after his history making run, Bannister announced his retirement from competitive racing to pursue his medical education and career, and it was indeed an extraordinary career, as further described in that Times obit:
In addition to his medical career — he became director of the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London — Bannister, from 1971 to 1974, served as the unpaid chairman of the British Sports Council, a government-sponsored organization that helped build and maintain sports facilities, and from 1976 to 1983 he was president of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Recreation, an umbrella group, founded in 1958, dedicated to disseminating new findings in sport science and promoting their applications.
From 1985 to 1993, he was the head of Pembroke College, Oxford.
It was a distinguished life, all the rest of it, however, in the shadow of a single moment, shortly after 6 p.m. on May 6, 1954, when an Oxford public address announcer delivered news of a just-completed race to 1,200 apprehensive spectators.
One can almost hear the words of Moonlight Graham, as played by Burt Lancaster in "Field of Dreams", being paraphrased by Bannister: "Suppose I'd only have been a doctor for four minutes. That would have been a tragedy."
The four minute mile began to fall with some regularity once Bannister did it, but he was the first, and that makes him special and historic. For the record, the current record for the mile is held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco with a time of 3:43.13, a pace that would have put him 100 meters ahead of Bannister in that 1954 race. That record has stood since 1999.
RIP Sir Roger Bannister.
I thought the anecdote about his wife's not knowing much about the sport was funny. She sometimes misconstrued the record into his running four miles in one minute. Now that would truly be The Impossible. I think.
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