Sir Roger Bannister dies at 88
In 1954, Brit was first to break four minutes in mile.
LONDON — It was a typical British afternoon in early May: wet, cool and blustery. Not exactly the ideal conditions for running four laps around a track faster than many thought humanly possible.
A lanky Oxford medical student named Roger Bannister looked up at the white-and-red English flag whipping in the wind atop a nearby church and figured he would have to call off the record attempt.
But then, shortly after 6 p.m. on May 6, 1954, the wind subsided. Bannister glanced up again and saw the flag fluttering oh-so gently. The race was on.
With two friends acting as pacemakers, Bannister churned around the cinder track four times. His long arms and legs pumping, his lungs gasping for air, he put on a furious kick over the final 300 yards and nearly collapsed as he crossed the finish line.
The announcer read out the time:
“3...” The rest was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. The 3 was all that mattered.
Bannister had just become the first runner to break the mythical 4-minute barrier in the mile — a feat of speed and endurance that stands as one of the seminal sporting achievements of the 20th century.
The black-and-white image of Bannister, eyes closed, head back, mouth wide open, straining across the tape at Oxford’s Iffley Road track, endures as a defining snapshot of a transcendent moment in track and field history.
Bannister died peacefully in Oxford on Saturday at the age of 88. He was “surrounded by his family who were as loved by him, as he was loved by them,” the family said in a statement Sunday. “He banked his treasure in the hearts of his friends.”
British Prime Minister Theresa May remembered Bannister as a “British sporting icon whose achievements were an inspiration to us all. He will be greatly missed.”
Bannister’s time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds captured the world’s imagination and buoyed the spirits of Britons still suffering through postwar austerity.
“It’s amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile,” Bannister said in 2012.
Bannister followed up his 4-minute milestone a few months later by beating Australia’s John Landy in the “Miracle Mile” or “Mile of the Century” at the Empire Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, with both men going under 4 minutes. Bannister regarded that as his greatest race because it came in a competitive championship against his fiercest rival.
While he will forever be remembered for his running, Bannister considered his long medical career in neurology as his life’s greatest accomplishment.
“My medical work has been my achievement and my family with 14 grandchildren,” he said. “Those are real achievements.”
The quest to break the 4-minute mile carried a special mystique. The numbers were easy for the public to grasp: 1 mile, 4 laps, 4 minutes.
When Sweden’s Gunder Hagg ran 4:01.4 in 1945, the chase was truly on. But, time and again, runners came up short. The 4-minute mark seemed like a brick wall that would never be toppled. Bannister was undaunted. “There was no logic in my mind that if you can run a mile in 4 minutes, 1 and 2/5ths, you can’t run it in 3:59,” he said. “I knew enough medicine and physiology to know it wasn’t a physical barrier, but I think it had become a psychological barrier.”
Bannister was born on March 23, 1929, in the London borough of Harrow. At the outbreak of World War II, the family moved to the city of Bath
Bannister’s passion for running took off in 1945 when his father took him to a track meet at London’s White City Stadium, which was built to host the 1908 Olympics. They watched British middle-distance star Sydney Wooderson, who had emerged as a rival to the trio of Swedish runners who had taken the mile world record down close to the 4-minute mark.
“I made up my mind then when I got to Oxford, I would take up running seriously,” Bannister said.
As a first-year student on an academic scholarship at Oxford, Bannister caught his coaches’ attention while running as a pacemaker in a mile race on March 22, 1947. Instead of dropping out of the race as pacers normally do, he kept running and beat the field by 20 yards.
“I knew from this day that I could develop this newfound ability,” he reflected in later life.
With the 1948 London Olympics approaching, Bannister was running mile times of around 4:10. The 19-yearold was selected as a “possible” for the British Olympic team, but decided he wasn’t ready and focused on preparing for the 1952 Helsinki Games.
Bannister was considered the favorite for the Helsinki gold in the 1,500 meters — the shorter metric mile distance run in the Olympics. Just before the games, he learned that organizers had added an extra round of heats, meaning he would have to run on three consecutive days.
With his rhythm thrown off, Bannister finished fourth in a final won by Josy Barthel of Luxembourg.
Had he won Olympic gold that day, Bannister almost certainly would have retired. But, criticized by the British media and disappointed in his own performance, he decided to keep running, dedicating himself to beating the 4-minute mile and winning gold at the ’54 Empire Games.
By 1954, Hagg’s record mile time had stood for nine years. Bannister, Landy and American miler Wes Santee were all threatening to break the mark and it became a matter of who would get there first.
“As it became clear that somebody was going to do it, I felt that I would prefer it to be me,” Bannister said.
Bannister scheduled his attempt for May 6 during a meet between Oxford and the Amateur Athletic Union. He started the day at the St. Mary’s Hospital lab in London, where he sharpened his spikes and rubbed graphite on them so they wouldn’t pick up too much of the track’s cinder ash. He took a midmorning train to Oxford.
The weather was dank and miserable. Bannister’s Austrian coach, Franz Stampfl, told him this might be his best chance. When the flag started to billow gently, he decided it was now or never.
“I calculated there’s a 50-50 chance of my doing it,” Bannister recalled. “I said, ‘If there’s a 50-50 chance and I don’t take it, I may never get another chance to beat Landy to it.’ So I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”