First person to run a sub 4 minute mile.
RIP
3:59.4 period of silence
He lived to eighty eight? I thought he would have gone quicker than that.
To be honest, I have always felt Bannister and the four-minute mile have been a bit overrated. The mile is not an important distance today and even at that time, the relevant Olympic distance was 1500m. Bannister never won an Olympic medal and his mile record was beaten in 45 days. It’s a bit strange that this record has become one of the most famous in athletics history. Jim Hines breaking the 10-second 100 m barrier in 1968 seems a much more significant milestone and few people remember that.
Having said that, I was fascinated to read that Bannister was a medical student and after retiring from athletics he had a long and distinguished career as a neurologist. On the morning of his record, he worked his shift at the hospital. He may not have been one of the all-time great athletes but he was certainly a great exemplar of the amateur tradition. RIP
First of all, breaking that record took one of the most rigorous training schedules up to that time. The progression was the stuff of news reels for decades. Landy and Bannister vowed to beat it about 7 years earlier and we watched.
Cars race the quarter mile. They race a standing mile. They race a flying mile. Records are set in miles per hour. It’s the Indianapolis 500, not the Indianapolis 804. It’s The Mile.
Second, and this is one of my main complaints about the metric system as a whole: 1500m means nothing. Why not 1600M ? or 2000? None of them mean anything. The mile is THE MILE. One Thousand Paces of Caesar’s stride for God’s sake. Nobody took an oath to beat the 1500M record.
Don’t get me started about the millimeter vs thousandths of an inch.
Dennis:)
In Mexico City. Less air resistance and all that.
And it’s the ONLY non-metric distance with official world records.
The reason for the 1500 was very early tracks were 500 meters. 3 laps to make a metric “mile”.
More at Quora
What stopped the mile record from being cracked the last 19 years? Stricter doping checks? Or was the record just too good?
Is it even run at the top levels of the sport anymore? Or have all the English-measure events been shelved? The 100-yard dash doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore either.
Not wishing to diss the record or a milestone but this is not correct.
Bannister was the first amateur to run a mile under 4mins on an Olympic standard track without wind assistance. He was paced, but that was deemed legal.
In 1770 (yep, almost 200 years earlier) James Parrott ran a mile along Old St, Shoreditch in London in under 4 minutes. It doesn’t appear in the record books because he did it to win a wager (at odds of only 3:1) so he was classed as a professional. It also patently wasn’t a flat 400m circular Olympic standard track.
Which is why it’s not recognized as a record.
Elvis, the mile is still run, it’s the only non-metric distance that still has official world records. Most meets run the 1500, the mile is usually a special event, especially if someone is intending a try at the record.
Three weeks later and not so far away, Diane Leather became the first woman to run a sub-5 minute mile. Women still haven’t cracked the 4-minute barrier but we’re getting close.
RIP, Dr. Bannister.
The marathon is a distance that I don’t think will ever go metric either, and it doesn’t have an official record because of the widely varying severity of courses.
The IAAF disagrees about marathon official records, although the constraints on the course limit it somewhat.
Actually, the records are officially recognized though there are conditions a course must meet to be record-eligible.
The distance of the marathon is the marathon, neither metric nor Imperial.
Not all that “rigorous”.
From an article in todays Miami Herald:
“At the time, Bannister was a full-time medical student and had to juggle his studies with his training. By modern standards, his daily half-hour workout was remarkably light.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/celebrities/article203447499.html
However, his book, The Four Minute Mile, made mention of doing a great deal of cycling.
He usually covered 5 miles in that half hour (run a lap in 60 sec., jog a lap in 2 minutes and just repeat the cycle). He also did frequent 3 laps in 3 minutes time-trials.
He actually became so specialized in the mile that he would sometimes cramp when racing the 2-mile.
No doubt one can get a great running work out in 30 minutes, if you are just trying to stay in shape. That’s about all the time I run on my treadmill and manage to burn over 400 calories, but I’m not trying to break a four minute mile.
I know that if I told my old running coach, (Joe Douglas, Santa Monica Track Club) that I only had half an hour to train, he would have kicked me off the team.
No doubt. As I mentioned, Bannister did a great deal of cycling, that took care of his basic conditioning. His training specifically “transferred” that fitness to his running performance.
Like any world-class distance runner, he was capable of remarkable performances in an untrained state.
Jim Ryun, in a few weeks, went from a 5:35 to 4:20-something. And broke 4 as a high school junior.
It’s no longer 26 miles, 385 yards?