Modest amateur who ran into the pages of sporting legend
OH, for those gentler, less squalid sporting times! That cry no doubt sounded in more than a few hearts as news broke that Sir Roger Bannister’s race was run. He was 88 and took the high table of the amateur ethic with him.
It is almost impossible now across the chasm of the ages to understand how simple and homespun a story unfolded on that damp May afternoon in 1954 when Bannister, a lanky 25-year- old medical student, ran the first subfour-minute mile and into the pages of sporting legend.
Homespun, yes, but the feat was wreathed in patriotic significance. Britain was just throwing off the hardships of post-war austerity. The Empire was crumbling. Yet a new and ‘gleaming’ Queen, as Churchill hailed the young Elizabeth II, had been crowned only the year before, bringing a dash of colour to a monochrome nation. And, on that same Coronation day, a British soldier, Colonel John Hunt, had led the pioneers who first conquered Everest to put us on top of the world.
This was the highfalutin’ context in which the modest, softly spoken hero of the cinder track prepared on his historic day.
He began the morning quietly at St Mary’s Hospital in London, sharpening his spikes and fretting over whether high winds would cause a postponement of his big run. He caught a train from Paddington to Oxford to meet up with his Oxford University contemporaries and pace- setters, Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, who had simply taken the afternoon off. As their time came, at 5pm, the breeze abated.
There were those who thought their task impossible. Ever since Sweden’s Gunder Hagg had run 4min 1.4sec in 1945, the challenge was set. But, close as others got, everyone fell just north of the magical figures.
Standing 6ft 2in tall, big-chested but a predominantly slim figure, Bannister crossed the line at Iffley Road, head back, eyes shut, mouth gaping. That black and white image defined Bannister for all time, no matter that he considered himself an athlete by hobby.
For the record, Brasher ran the first lap in 58sec and the first halfmile in 1min 58sec. Chataway, redhaired and with style written all over him, escorted Bannister to the end of the third lap in 3min 1sec, leaving the history-maker to complete the final lap in 59sec.
With 300 yards remaining, Bannister surged ahead of Chataway.
‘The world seemed to stand still, or did not exist,’ recalled Bannister. ‘The only reality was the next 200 yards of track under my feet. The tape meant finality — extinction perhaps. I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well. I drove, impelled by a combination of fear and pride.’
Bannister slumped into the hands of friends, spent. Norris McWhirter, of Guinness Book of
Records fame, announced the time: ‘Three . . . ’ His words were immediately drowned out by cheers. The other 59.4sec were rendered immaterial. One of the milestones of 20th-century sport had been reached.
Nowadays, agents would beatat a path to Bannister’s nisward hospital ward and turn him into a multi-millionairee commodity. commodhis But there was no business side to deal with then; just the penniless glory of a student. Bannister was back to his books and on his way to the doctorate in medicine he added to his c.v. four months later.
That is how it was then. A few days later Tom Finney played on the right wing for Preston North End against West Bromwich Albion in the FA Cup final. They lost 3-2. The beaten players got nothing. The ‘ Preston Plumber’ simply kept up his trade while putting thousands on the gates of the football grounds he dazzled.
Jaroslav Drobny and Maureen Connolly won the gentlemen’s and ladies’ singles titles at Wimbledon and received not a penny. Amateurism still ruled.
How alien that notion of sport for fun must seem to the Lottery feather-bedded stars of today, for whom gym and rest and supplements, legal or dubious, are the constraints of their calling. There is little space for hinterland and more’s the pity.
Indeed, Bannister once said thathis
ideal athlete would enjoyj theth odddd cigarette. Chataway did — giving up running (after holding the 5,000m world record) so that he could enjoy life’s delights such as good claret.
‘It was perhaps a pretty liberal interpretation of the ideal,’ Bannister later clarified. ‘But what I was trying to say was that you don’t have to make the rest of your life boring to be a good runner. I went climbing in Scotland three weeks before I ran that mile.
‘If you lose your zest for life, your freshness, you’re not going to run well.’
He also nailed the absurd modern contention that 10,000 hours of practice can make practically anyone a champion.
No, he ran everywhere as a child, saying that running came as easily to him, or more easily, than walking. We are talking here about genetics or God-given talent.
He simply snatched his training four or five times a week, in 30 or 45- minute stretches during lunchtime. And before he broke the four-minute barrier, he took five days clean off.
Amateur is a dirty word in some quarters these days, but consider what Bannister and his pacemakers achieved in lives roundly lived.
The star man became a distinguished neurologist and master of Pembroke College, Oxford, chairman of the Sports Council and a leading denouncer of drugs.
Chataway, later knighted, was the first man to read the news on ITV, rose from Conservative MP to Cabinet minister, became chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority and much more.
Brasher, after winning gold in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, was a successful journalist, millionaire businessman, racehorse owner, philanthropist and founder of the London Marathon.
Bannister’s world record stood for only 46 days. But it did not matter. He won the ‘Mile of the Century’ against Australian John Landy at the Empire Games a few months later. And then it was medicine, for which his knighthood was bestowed.
‘My greatest achievement was putting a brick into the realm of medical knowledge,’ he said, putting sport in its place.
‘ That and a family with 14 grandchildren.’
He died peacefully on Saturday at his home close to Iffley Road, with Moyra his wife of 63 years and ‘surrounded by his family who were as loved by him, as he was loved by them’. The Bannisters signed off: ‘He banked his treasure in the hearts of his friends.’
And of all sport, they might have added.