Diane Leather
Unheralded athlete who in 1954 became the first woman to run a mile in under five minutes
DIANE LEATHER, who has died aged 85, was an athlete who in 1954 became the first women to run a mile in under five minutes – 23 days after Roger Bannister had become the first man to run the distance in under four minutes.
She achieved the feat during the Midlands Women’s Championships at the Alexander Sports Ground in Birmingham, breaking the tape in 4 minutes 59.6 seconds. But while Bannister’s name resounded around the world, Diane Leather remained in relative obscurity.
At that time the mile was not even recognised as a women’s distance for record purposes by the world governing body of athletics, the IAAF, and her time was recognised only as a world “best”. At the Olympics, until 1964, when the 400 and 800metres events were introduced, the furthest distance the women were allowed to run was 200 metres.
Diane Leather had registered her first world’s “best” in September 1953, when she ran the mile in 5:02.6. On May 26 the following year she lowered the mark to 5:00.2, then three days later made her historic run in Birmingham. When she was told she had set the world’s best time, she said: “Oh good, at last.”
In 1955 she lowered her own mark again, to 4:45.00, a time which was not bettered for eight years, by the Kiwi runner Marise Chamberlain in 1962. It was another five years before the IAAF began recognising women’s world mile records.
Diane Leather was also a strong 800m runner, and in 1954, three months after her mile achievement, she took silver in the European Championships in Bern, repeating the feat four years later at the Europeans in Stockholm. In 1955 she broke the 800m world record, and she held the British 1500m record for 11 years.
Diane Susan Leather was born at Streetly, Staffordshire, on January 7 1933. One of six children, she was the daughter of a surgeon, James Leather, and Mabel (née Barringer). She trained as a chemist at Birmingham College of Technology (now Aston University), and joined the Birchfield Harriers, initially to play hockey. Then, inspired by watching the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki on television, she took up running, and was coached by Doris Nelson Neal, a legendary figure in British athletics; within two years, she was a world-beater.
On May 29 1954, the day of the Midlands Women’s Championships, she was clearly in form: earlier in the meeting, she had set an all-comers’ British best time in the 880 yards. Although the track was rain-soaked, and there was a nasty crosswind, she told reporters: “I feel fine, I’m going to have a go at the mile for a double.”
She did so, in her Birchfield Harriers shirt that bore the club motto, “Fleet and Free”. Unlike Bannister she had no pacemakers, and her split times were erratic. But after three-quarters of a mile, the sparse crowd sensed something special was happening, and she crossed the line the full length of the final straight ahead of the runner-up.
Three weeks earlier, after his record run at Iffley Road, Oxford, Roger Bannister had been taken off in a waiting car to appear on BBC television. Diane Leather went for a quiet drink with the club secretary. Her achievement did not go completely unrecognised, however: she was later invited to have tea with the Lord Mayor of Birmingham.
In 1959 she married Peter Charles, a production engineer and later a financial consultant whom she had met when they were students; he had the running shoes in which she made history plated in silver. The following year, past her best, she bowed out of the sport after being eliminated in the 800m heats at the Rome Olympics (she had been named the British team’s vice-captain).
Her first child of four was born in 1961, and she became a Samaritan, as well as fostering six other children. She worked as an analytical chemist in London, then gained a diploma in social work, going on to work in Hertfordshire in the field of child protection. In 1986 she settled in Cornwall, where she worked for a bereavement charity, retiring in 1998.
In 2004 Diane Charles took part in the 50th-anniversary celebrations of Bannister’s record run. “She’s not forgotten by me,” he remarked. She seemed not to care too much that her mile mark was overshadowed by Bannister’s. “People of an age would remember it,” she said. “The younger people don’t even know about it. That’s life, isn’t it? Occasionally, people will say: ‘I heard your name on a radio quiz the other day’.”
Diane Charles’s husband Peter died in 2017. They had one daughter and three sons, all of whom survive her.
Diane Leather, born January 7 1933, died September 5 2018