Diane Leather, first woman to run a mile in under five minutes, dies at 85

The crushed cinder running track was soaked with rain. A crosswind was blowing. But when Diane Leather finished her race at Birmingham’s Alexander Sports Ground on May 29, 1954, she had set a British record for the 880 yards — and had begun steeling herself for yet another race, one that had been “deemed too far for a girl,” as one reporter put it, and was not even authorized for women by the International Amateur Athletic Federation.

“I feel fine,” she told reporters. “I’m going to have a go at the mile for a double.”

One hour later, the 21-yearold Leather became the first woman to run a mile in under five minutes, propelling herself forward in one last surge of strength to finish in 4 minutes and 59.6 seconds. It was an achievement, the Associated Press reported, that was “not long ago considered virtually unattainable by women.”

And because of concerns over women’s frailty, it was not officially a “world record.” Though clocked by official timekeepers and long recognized as valid, Leather’s barrier-breaking runs were merely considered “world bests.” The IAAF did not recognize women’s mile and 1,500-meter records until 1967.

Leather, who soon retired from running and worked for more than four decades as a social worker in England, helping bereaved families and foster children who rarely knew of her exploits on the track, died Sept. 5 at a hospital in Truro, in the English county of Cornwall. She was 85 and had recently suffered a stroke, said her son Matthew Charles.

A onetime lacrosse and field hockey player, Leather had taken up running only after watching television broadcasts of the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, where women competed in sprints and jumps but were barred from middle- or long-distance events. At longer distances, observers said, their bodies might simply break down: The last time women had competed in the 800 meters at the Olympics, in 1928, six runners had “collapsed” at the finish line. “Even this distance makes too great a call on feminine strength,” the New York Times reported.

But it was at those longer events that Leather most excelled. While studying chemistry at what is now Aston University in Birmingham, she joined the Birchfield Harriers athletic club and came under the tutelage of coach Dorette Nelson Neal. Training five days a week, fueled by a lunchtime diet of kippers, the 5-foot-10 runner set a women’s mile mark within a year with a time of 5 minutes 2.6 seconds.

With that, the 5-minute barrier seemed on the verge of collapse. Romanian runner Edith Treybal ran a 5:00.3 in late 1953. Then, on May 26, 1954, Leather came within a stride of her goal, notching a time of 5:00.2.

Her moment of glory came three days later.

“I think I did wake up nervous that day,” she told Britain’s Independent newspaper in 2004. “You always did. The mile was important to me because it had gone down, year after year, to five minutes. Then everyone was saying that someone was going to break it, and it happened to be me.”