Athlete turned to broadcasting
Record-breaker advocated tolerance, held many posts
Sir Christopher Chataway, who died Sunday at age 82, was the athlete who paced Roger Bannister to the first sub-four minute mile, finishing second himself. He later served in the governments of Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath; was a pioneer of commercial broadcasting; and served as chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority.
Although “built all wrong for running” and fond of a post-race cigar, Chataway was a world-class competitor from the half-mile to the half-marathon, with a fearsome final kick. He broke the world 5,000 metres record; competed in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics; and in 1955 broke the four-minute barrier himself, finishing second to Laszlo Tabori in 3 min 59.8 sec.
A “really fast mile” had been promised when the Amateur Athletics Association met Oxford University May 6, 1954, as Bannister, a medical student, set out to beat his British record of 4 mins 3.6 sec.
With Chris Brasher, Chataway set a cracking pace, recording 4 mins 7.2 sec. Bannister excelled with laps of 57.5 sec, 60.7, 62.3 and a final 58.9. As he collapsed through the tape, three timekeepers certified the result, then Norris McWhirter took the loud-hailer. Cheers drowned him out as he gave the time as “Three …”. Bannister had shattered Gunder Haegg’s world record by two seconds with a run of 3 mins 59.4.
For Chataway, the bridge from athletics to politics was television. The reader of ITN’s first bulletin on Oct. 11, 1955, he was one of a cluster of contemporaries who became household names: Robin Day (with whom he shared ITN’s debut), Ludovic Kennedy and Geoffrey Johnson Smith. Setting up commercial radio as Minister for Posts and Telecommunications, he would spend 12 years with the medium as chairman of LBC.
He was in the vanguard of social reform, co-sponsoring Humphry Berkeley’s bill to legalize homosexuality and telling for the Ayes in the 1964 vote to end capital punishment.
Pro-European and very much a Heath man, Chataway left Parliament in 1974, moving effortlessly into the boardroom before his appointment by John Major to head the CAA.
With three friends, Chataway was prime mover of World Refugee Year, which raised more than $15 million in Britain alone and brought him the 1960 Nansen Medal.
Christopher John Chataway was born in London on Jan. 31, 1931, spending his childhood in Sudan, where his father was in the political service.
Reading philosophy, politics and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, Chataway won a cross-country Blue in his first term. Early in 1952 he cut Bannister’s Oxford mile record to 4 mins 10.2 sec; that July he knocked five seconds off the British all-comers’ two-mile record.
In the 1952 Helsinki Olympics he tripped going for the lead in the 5,000 metres, recovering to finish fifth, 12 seconds behind Emil Zatopek.
Chataway joined Guinness as a transport executive, but continued to run. Gordon Pirie and Australia’s John Landy had talked of breaking four minutes, but the barrier stood until that day at Iffley Road.
Then, on Oct. 13, again at White City, Chataway captured the world 5,000 metres record, beating Russia’s Vladimir Kuts in 13 mins 51.6 sec. Although Kuts regained his record 10 days later, the Soviet authorities made Chataway a Master of Sport. After running his only sub-four minute mile, on July 30, 1955, Chataway broke his own world three-mile record by nine seconds.
Chataway joined ITN two months before ITV went live. He excelled, but wanted to do more reporting — and in 1956 he moved to the BBC as an interviewer with Panorama.
In 1958 he was elected to London County Council, and in 1959, at 28, won Lewisham North from Labour by 4,613 votes.
Early in 1961 Richard Wood, Minister of Power, made Chataway his PPS, and the following year Macmillan brought him into his government as parliamentary under-secretary for education. His priority was doubling the number of trainee teachers.
Defeated in the Labour landslide of 1966, he rejoined the BBC, presenting Horizon.
After winning the June 1970 election, Heath made Chataway, not yet 40, minister for posts and telecommunications. In April 1972 Heath promoted him to the new sub-cabinet post of minister for industrial development.
On deciding to leave Parliament in late 1974, Chataway went into merchant banking with Orion, where he was a managing director until 1988, heading mergers and acquisitions.
When bidding opened for a breakfast television franchise in 1980, Chataway chaired the unsuccessful AM Television, backed by Pearson. From 1981 to 1993 he was chairman of LBC, the London news radio station set up under his legislation.
In 1991 Chataway took the chair at the CAA. His greatest challenge was bringing on stream the computerized NERC air traffic control centre near Southampton.
He was knighted in 1995, and retired the following year.
Christopher Chataway married first, in 1959 (dissolved 1975), Anna Lett, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. He married secondly, in 1976, Carola Walker, with whom he had two sons.