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Sir Roger Bannister was born in 1929. He studied medicine at Oxford University. In 1952, he represented Great Britain in the Olympics in Helsinki however, Sir Bannister could only finish 4th in the 1500 metres. Bannister was inspired by the intensive training and the three gold medals of Emile Zatopek, so he decided to make a great effort to beat the magical four minute barrier for the mile. Bannister was at the time working as a doctor and only had limited time for training in the evening. He focused on short intervals, anaerobic training and the use of block training (building up for certain weeks).
In 1954, Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. A noted British runner, he won the British mile championships in 1951, 1953, and 1954, and also won the Empire championship in 1954. In addition, he won the European 1,500 meter championship in 1954.
Bannister was born in 1929 in Harrow, England. As a child, he loved to run. He once said that it was easier for him to run than walk, "I just ran anywhere and everywhere—never because it was an end in itself, but because it was easier for me to run than to walk"
He won his school's cross-country meet for three years in a row when he was 12, 13, and 14. At the age of 16, he decided to become a runner, but when he started studying medicine at Oxford University in 1946, he had never run on a track or worn running shoes with spikes. In 1946, Bannister began medical school in Oxford, where he had secured a scholarship. Every day, during lunch, he would pay three pence to enter Paddington Park, which was near the hospital, so that he could practice running.
Bannister was not obviously talented as a runner, and barely made Oxford University's third track team. On March 22, 1947, however, he was running as a pacer for members of Oxford's first team in a mile race against Cambridge. Instead of stopping, as a pacer was supposed to, he kept on running, not only completing the course but winning by 20 yards with a time of 4:30.8. Frank Deford of the Sports Illustrated said this about Bannister after the race, "I knew from this day that I could develop this newfound ability. He still did not think of athletics as a career, but simply as something one did in order to be well-rounded.”
In 1949, Bannister won races in the United States with some incredible times of 4:11.1 and 4:11.9. After taking six weeks off, he came in third in another race with a time of 4:14.2. In 1950, he ran a mile in 4:13, although not as impressive as compared to his earlier efforts. However, his last lap was an amazing 57.5, which indicated that he was capable of greater speeds, and that he had the ability to push for a burst of speed at the end of a race.
In 1951, he ran in the Penn Relays, he started out slow but then took the lead after two and a half laps. He won with a time of 4:08.3, and he took just 56.7 for the last lap. He knew from this performance that he could probably run a mile in 4 minutes, 5 seconds. At the time, no one had ever run a mile in less than four minutes, and most people following track and field believed it could never be done.
Helenski Olympics 1952
Bannister won the British mile championships in 1951 and 1953. He competed in the 1500 meters in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. In the semifinal, he came in fifth, but the next day, in the final, his legs were tired and heavy. A Fourth place finish was the best he could do. Though he was disgusted with his performance, he was later proud that he had made it to the Olympics.
After the Olympics, Bannister spent some time deciding whether or not he wanted to continue running. He decided to devote himself to breaking the four-minute barrier for the mile. He trained for half an hour each day; which didn’t seem like much time, but Bannister spent it doing arduous speed workouts. To help him track his timing and set the pace, he got a friend to help him, Chris Chataway. On June 27, 1953, he ran 4:02 with the help of two other friends, Chris Brasher and Don Macmillan, as pacers. Although the time was a British record, the authorities would not allow it to be placed in the record books because Bannister had used pacers. At the time, runners were supposed to run on their own, and pace themselves.
In the winter and spring of 1954, Bannister was so busy with his studies that he did not have time to run. He would soon start his medical residency, which would leave him with even less free time. He was further frustrated by the knowledge that Australian miler John Landy was aiming to break the four-minute barrier, and that Landy might do it by spring. Bannister decided that he would try to break the record on May 6, in his first race of 1954, at a small meet. And, in order to relax, he went rock-climbing in Scotland.
Breaking the four minute barrier
Bannister knew that he would have the best chance at breaking the record if the weather was perfect. When May 6 dawned with rain and win, he went to his job at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, knowing as he made his rounds that he might lose his chance at the meet later that day.
After work, Bannister took the train from London to Oxford. On the train he met Franz Stampfl, who coached Bannister's teammate Chris Brasher. Stampfl told Bannister that despite the weather, he should give it his best try, saying, "If you don't take this opportunity, you may never forgive yourself." Bannister remained undecided through lunch and teatime later that day. As the race began at the Iffley Road track in Oxford, only about 1,100 spectators had showed up. Among them were Bannister's parents, who had been told by a friend that something special might happen that day.
As Bannister warmed up on the track, he kept looking toward the church of St. John the Evangelist, where a flag flying straight out above the steeple showed the strength of the wind. A few minutes before the race started at 6:10 p.m., the flag began to drop, and Bannister told himself that if everyone in characteristically rainy and windy England waited for good weather before doing anything, nothing would ever be done. He told Chataway and Brasher he was going to make the attempt on the record.
As the gun sounded, the runners took off. Brasher was in the lead until the end of the third lap, when Chataway took over the pace. On the backstretch Bannister passed him, moving ahead of all the other runners, into a new pace, never run before. On the stretch, a gust of wind pushed him sideways, stealing valuable fractions of seconds, but Bannister kept going, hitting the tape at 3:59.4. Bannister later said of those last few seconds of the race, "I felt that the moment of a lifetime had come. There was no pain, only a great utility of movement and aim. The world seemed to stand still or did not exist; the only reality was the next two hundred yards of track under my feet." As he crossed over the finish line, he was so exhausted that he collapsed, almost passing out.
The crowd went wild, rushing onto the track and surrounding Bannister. A report in the London Times on the following day noted, "There was a scene of the wildest excitement—and what miserable spectators they would have been if they had not waved their programmes, shouted, even jumped in the air a little."
He went on to be a distinguished neurologist and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, before retiring in 1993. When interviewed 50 years after the famous four minute mile, Bannister was asked whether he thought the sub four minute mile was his life’s greatest achievements. He said no. He felt his work in neurology was of greater importance. Bannister made discoveries in the field of autonomic failure.
The current mile record is held by Hicham El Guerrouj’s with a time of 3:43.13.
Sir Roger Bannister is 86 years old and suffers from Parkinson’s disease and needs a pair of crutches to walk from the armchair to the door of his sitting room.
