The brilliant athlete who Britain forgot
Diane Leather 1933-2018
Twenty-three days after Roger Bannister made global headlines by breaking the fourminute mile, a young chemist named Diane Leather became the first woman to run a mile in under five minutes. The feat, once considered impossible, had been hotly contested: in 1953, Edith Treybal of Romania had achieved a time of five minutes and 0.3 seconds. On 26 May 1954, at the Alexander Sports Ground in Birmingham, Leather set a new world record with 5:00.2. Three days later, and three hours after running the 880 yards, she had another crack at the sub-five-minute mile. Unlike Bannister, she was running without pacemakers when she crossed the line 160 yards ahead of her nearest rival, in 4:59.6. On being told her time, she remarked, with typical reticence: “Oh, good. At last.” Whereas Bannister was whisked to London to appear on TV after his race, Leather celebrated by going for a drink with her coach.
Diane Leather, who has died aged 85, was born in Streetly, Staffordshire, the daughter of James, a surgeon, and Mabel. With five brothers, she played sports from an early age, and also did so at Harrogate Ladies’ College. But it was when she saw footage of the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, while working as a chemist at what is now Aston University, that she was inspired her to join a local running club, the Birchfield Harriers. She found she had a natural talent, said The Guardian, and within her first year, she’d set a British record for the women’s mile and a team world record for the 3 x 880yd relay. Buoyed by this success and encouraged by her coach, Doris Nelson Neal, she set her sights on the sub-five-minute mile, but the International Amateur Athletic Federation didn’t recognise the mile as a world record for women, owing to unfounded concerns that they might injure themselves if they competed in distance races.
“Diane went hell for leather,” noted one headline, after her historic run in 1954. But she went even faster than that: her best time for the mile, set in 1955, was 4:45.0, an unofficial record she held for seven years. (It now stands at 4:12.56.) She also won silver medals at two European Championships. In 1960, the women’s 800 metres was finally reintroduced at the Olympics, but Leather was by then past her peak, said The Times, and only got as far as the heats. She retired from running soon after, and retrained as a social worker, specialising in the care of vulnerable children. Leather, who was married with two children, also worked as a volunteer for the bereavement charity Cruse. Her running achievements had by then faded into obscurity. But “she’s not forgotten by me”, said Bannister, on the 50th anniversary of their record-breaking runs, nor was she by the people of Birmingham who, in 1990, voted her one of their “100 Great Brummies”.