ATHLETE ROGER BANNISTER DIES AT 88 WAS THE FIRST MAN TO RUN A MILE IN UNDER FOUR MINUTES
LONDON: Roger Bannister, the first runner to break the 4-minute barrier in the mile, is dead. He was 88. Bannister’s family said in a statement that he died peacefully on Saturday in Oxford, the city where he cracked the feat many had thought humanly impossible on a windy afternoon in 1954. Bannister had been slowed by Parkinson’s disease since 2011.
Bannister clocked 3:59.4 seconds at Oxford’s Iffley Road track on May 6, 1954, to break the 4-minute mile — a test of speed and endurance that stands as one of the defining sporting achievements. “It’s amazing that more people have climbed Mt Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile,” Bannister said in 2012.
The achievement captured public imagination and lifted the
spirits of Britons still suffering through postwar austerity.
“It became a symbol of attempting a challenge in the physical world of something hitherto thought impossible,” Bannister had said. “I’d like to see it as a metaphor not only for sport, but for life and seeking challenges.”
After disappointing at the 1952 Helsinki Games, he decided to chase the 4-minute mark. His initial record lasted 46 days, as Australian John Landy ran 3:57.9 in Finland, on June 21, 1954. That set the stage for the showdown between Bannister and Landy at the Empire Games, now the Commonwealth Games, in Vancouver on August 9, 1954.
Bannister won in 3:58.8, with Landy second in 3:59. It was the first time two men had run under 4 minutes in the same race. Bannister considered that win more satisfying than the first because it came in a competitive race.
To Sebastian Coe, Bannister’s achievement “transcended sport beyond athletics”. Steve Cram, who broke the mile record in 1985, said: “Bannister really started off that great British tradition of middle-distance runners which people like Seb (Coe), Steve (Ovett) and myself were able to continue. But beyond that, he was part of that pioneering spirit which seemed to exist in the 1950s — with a new Queen, Everest being conquered, the new TV age and the idea that you could do anything you put your mind to in barrier-breaking.”