‘Everybody was mesmerized’
Jim Peters’ dramatic finish to the marathon at the 1954 Empire Games produced one of the most compelling photos in Canadian sports history
Aug. 7, 1954, was probably the hottest day of the year in Vancouver. The temperature was a humid 28C, but out on the streets, where the Commonwealth’s best marathoners were plodding and sweating away, it felt more like 38 degrees. The hills on this course were killer. More than half the field failed to finish, and seasoned international runners were dropping like flies after just eight miles.
England’s Jim Peters was the fastest marathoner in history, and the heavy favourite to take gold. He typically didn’t drink water during races, and didn’t on this day as he ran from the front. He was suffering in the heat, but had still built a three-mile lead over the next closest runner.
Jason Beck, the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame’s curator, tells Peters’ story in his new book The Miracle Mile: Stories of the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games. Here’s an edited excerpt:
As Jim Peters approached Empire Stadium, he became vaguely aware of something wrong. “As I went up the hill I wobbled a little,” he later wrote. But this was more than a wobble, as at least one witness saw him collide with a lamppost. Clearly he was in some distress.
After watching the Mile, Australia’s Geoff Warren had gone to stand on the hill outside the stadium to encourage Peters on his way in. “As he came towards me,” he recalled, “he was already in a bother, still running, glassy-eyed, and didn’t acknowledge my call: ‘Come on, Jim! Come on, you’re nearly there!’ He didn’t seem to see me even though he passed within only a few metres, veering from side to side.” Peters’ physical appearance gave Warren a chill. “He looked like a concentration camp victim. His bones were sticking out and his eyes and skull looked thin. It was a horror sight.”
Peters had reached the stadium in 2 hours, 23 minutes — near but not on the world-record pace, as some sources incorrectly reported. As the gate swung open to admit him, the PA announcer intoned, “Jim Peters, about to enter the stadium. He’s not in good shape.”
Peters wobbled a little at the top of the steep ramp down to the track. The thought crossed his mind that he should wave to the crowd as he usually did entering a stadium at the end of a race, but he decided to take no chances and simply finish this murderous run off. He found his rhythm again and began awkwardly teetering toward the oval.
And that’s when everything seemed to stop, the entire stadium focusing on the pale little man dressed in allwhite in sharp, shocking contrast to the black asphalt on which he stood. Probably owing to his peculiar head-bobbing, even more pronounced by his extreme fatigue, the crowd momentarily hesitated. Was he OK?
Some mistakenly thought he might be clowning around. “I thought he was putting on a show,” said Mario Caravetta. Then, realizing Peters was fighting exhaustion, the crowd let loose a strong roar of encouragement, and he continued ambling down the slope with the eyes of 35,000 people upon him.
And then Jim Peters fell. The crowd released a collective gasp and a sudden hush blanketed the stands. “That deathly silence ... it was unreal, something I’d like to forget — but I’ll never forget it,” recalled New Zealand’s Murray Halberg.
“I just couldn’t understand what had happened,” Peters said later of his somersault near the foot of the ramp.
“For a moment I was completely bewildered. Then I made up my mind I was going to finish.”
Shakily he picked himself up, and the crowd applauded his courage. He must have stumbled over something on the ramp, right?
But after a few more steps Peters collapsed again. From that point on, he slipped in and out of consciousness.
“I do remember coming into the stadium and falling for the first time on the sharp incline,” he recalled. “I thought of 1908 and Dorando Pietri and the very next race I was due to run (at the European championships in Berne).”
Up in the royal box, Lord Alexander must have been squirming uncomfortably. It had been just the previous day that he had told Peters of witnessing Pietri’s collapse at the 1908 Olympics.
Peters later recalled falling three times. In reality, it was closer to 12, although some claim it was as high as 20. Over the next 10 minutes — but again, estimates vary greatly — he managed to stumble and crawl just 200 yards of the track, when normally he would have pounded out two miles in the same amount of time.
“Everybody was mesmerized,” remembered North Vancouver sports historian Len Corben, then just a boy. “When you’re in a situation like that, time kind of stands still, almost like in a car accident.”
Watching Peters in this state was truly horrible, but most couldn’t take their eyes off him. Many commented they felt they were witnessing the final stages of a man running himself to death before their very eyes. And they were right. Peters’ skin was a ghostly, glazed white with just the slightest hint of sickly yellow, which was magnified grotesquely by the glare of the bright, beating sun.
No longer running, he shuffled drunkenly, legs rubbery, arms swinging limply, everything uncoordinated, and a blank, emotionless stare upon his face.
“He looked as if he was in a trance,” remembered Australia’s Kevan Gosper.
He tripped, twisted, fell on his back, picked himself up, then pitched face-first to the cinders, badly cutting his lip. When he picked himself up again, it was clear he had lost all bodily co-ordination as he turned over on both ankles with each step.
At one point, though there was a water fountain beckoning like an oasis just a few feet off the track, he crawled on his hands and knees and seemed to be calling out for help like a man lost in the parching desert.
“I thought I could see the tape, you know, sort of a mirage,” he said days later. “I thought I’d made it, but the tape didn’t seem to be coming any nearer.”
At first the crowd had roared each time he rose and collectively groaned when he fell. But soon the entire stadium fell into shocked silence, amazed something like this could be happening in front of them. Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one seemed to have the wherewithal or authority to do so. And so it went on.
Gradually Peters worked his way to the oval’s west side straight, then suddenly veered toward the stands, his dragging feet kicking up white puffs as he crossed lane lines. The crowd gasped as he collapsed once more.
Peters said later he had seen the shade of the stadium roof and was seeking refuge there from the relentless sun. By now a massive crowd of volunteers, officials and other athletes were following his progress from the infield — trying to get close but not too close.
With tears in his eyes, the 6-foot7 English shot putter John Savidge got down on hands and knees at the track’s edge next to Peters and pounded the cinders with his fists. Some heard him yelling, “Get up, Jim, get up!” but Warren, now among the mass of people beside the track, heard Savidge say, “Give up, Jim!” Either way Peters didn’t hear him.
Reactions of other witnesses ran the gamut. Some wept, others turned away unable to watch and a few were visibly sick, including one reporter who vomited at trackside.
For Roger Bannister, just minutes after achieving victory in the race that came to be known as the Miracle Mile, the sight of Peters in this condition was horrifying. “Stop it, for heaven’s sake!” he called out. Many of the other milers still down on the infield saw things unfold firsthand, too.
“It was horrible, like something out of the Colosseum,” remembered Australia’s John Landy. “And ironic that it should happen immediately after the Mile.”
Those with the ability to assist were waved away by officials who feared their intervention would disqualify Peters. Several doctors pleaded with them to remove Peters from the race before he further endangered his life. The English team officials heard the recommended action but refused to allow it.
Ultimately, a most unlikely individual took matters into his own hands and ended this disaster before it became any worse.
The English team’s masseur, Mick Mayes, an elderly, silver-haired man wearing a gleaming white lab coat, was standing at the finish line next to North Vancouver’s Bill Parnell.
“I said to him, ‘Micky, somebody should end that,’” recollected Parnell. “He said, ‘I’m going to.’”
With those words, Mayes pushed through the crowd, his anklelength lab coat billowing out as he moved, and stepped onto the track just beyond the finish line. It made for one of the most dramatic sports photos ever taken.
Mayes stood there, arms outstretched, gently coaxing Peters in, a look of sincere compassion on his face that seemed to say, “Come now, son, your work today is done.”
Peters, seeing Mayes’ inviting arms, picked up his awkward pace and collapsed into them. His horrendous battle was over.
“I said to him, ‘Micky, somebody should end that.’ He said, ‘I’m going to.’” — BILL PARNELL NORTH VANCOUVER RUNNER PLEADS WITH OFFICIAL MICK MAKES TO INTERVENE