MILE OF MEMORIES

They are old men now, old men with long memories, and today they will gather once more to commemorate one of the greatest achievements in sports history.

Each of them is retired, one a neurosurgeon, another a businessman, the third a sports writer. And 45 years ago, on a windy, wet London afternoon, they stunned the world of track and field with an assault on time.

The setting was a nondescript dual meet between Oxford and some British Amateur Athletic Assn. runners at Iffley Road Track, not the most likely place to make history. The mile race had six runners, including a lanky 25-year-old medical student named Roger Bannister.

And on this drab afternoon, May 6, 1954, he would run that mile faster than anyone ever before--under four minutes.

Paavo Nurmi of Finland ran the mile in 4:10.4 in 1923. American Glenn Cunningham did 4:06.8 in 1934. Gunder Hagg of Sweden lowered it to 4:01.4 in 1945. The progression was stuck there for nearly a decade, waiting for someone to move it along.

Bannister knew others were approaching the four-minute mark. Australian John Landy was closing in. So was American Wes Santee.

“There had been a psychological barrier,” Bannister said. “Landy ran 4:02 four times. He said, ‘It’s like a brick wall.’ That’s not reasonable. If you can do 4:02, you can do 3:59.”

The question, though, was who would do it first.

So there was some urgency as the runners gathered at Iffley.

“It was a windy day,” Bannister said. “The problem was whether it was worth attempting. Running in wind is inefficient. In wind, it is virtually impossible to run economically. If you run 3:56 on a calm day, you would be pressed to run 4:00 on a windy day.”

The attempt had been planned for some time. The question was not whether Bannister would make the attempt, but rather when he would make it.

“We knew it would be of tremendous interest,” said Chris Chattaway, who would set much of the pace for his friend. “A number of people had been trying for a number of years. It was the Everest of athletics.

“A few weeks before, we decided that would be the day. Because of the weather, we discussed it until the last hour.”

No one was more perplexed than Bannister.

“I spent a lot of the day pondering,” he said. “We ran on cinder tracks. When they were wet, the surface stuck to your spikes and made your feet feel heavier.

“I had two thoughts. One was, here I did have a chance. If I didn’t take it, would I ever forgive myself? I was fit, but I could fall under a bus or pull a muscle. The question was, would I get a better chance?”

A half-hour before the race, the wind began to let up.

“I remember a flag on a church steeple, the flag of St. George, go limp,” Bannister said. “The flag was a wind gauge.”

He then made up his mind to go for it, and the others agreed. Chattaway and Chris Brasher would set the pace.

“Brasher was the slowest of us,” Bannister said. “He was a steeplechase champion runner. He raced a half-mile in under two minutes. Chattaway, who ran a four-minute mile later, was faster.”

And Bannister, it turned out, was fastest.

“Brasher led the first two laps,” Chattaway said. “Then I led until the last half-lap. In a major event, nobody has been paced quite as far as that. These days, although you get a pacer, the pacer usually drops back halfway.

“We planned carefully. We put in an enormous effort. It hurt like anything. So few such plans work out as this did.”

As he passed Chattaway in the last half-lap, Bannister’s face was etched in pain. He pushed himself for those final few yards and collapsed into the arms of officials as he crossed the finish line.

The time was 3:59.4.

What made the accomplishment so remarkable was that Bannister’s preparation had been minimal.

“I hadn’t raced at all for eight months, since the previous September,” he said. “There was no indoor season in England. I had trained, but this was my first race of the year. I raced rarely. My training would be viewed as ridiculously light.”

Bannister has a theory about that.

“I did hard running for a half-hour,” he said. “Why, to release all your power in four minutes, is it necessary to race 10 miles? I used a mixture of fast and slow training to build speed and stamina. I found I could race at the beginning of the season. I ran on nervous energy and adrenaline.”

The record lasted all of 46 days. On June 21, Landy lowered the mark to 3:58. That set up a match race between the two at the last British Empire Games in Vancouver, a race Bannister considers more significant than the first four-minute mile.

“It was a head-to-head race without pacemakers,” Bannister said. “Whoever would win could reasonably be called the world’s fastest man. There was a finality about it.

“Landry had always led. He led in that race. He really left me at the half-mile. I caught him at the last bend. He looked over his left shoulder to see where I was and I overtook him. I got several yards advantage.”

Bannister won in 3:58.8 and Landy was timed in 3:59.6.

Bannister would race just once more, winning the 1,500 in the European Championships. Then it was off to medical school and his career in neurosurgery.

Chattaway went into politics, owned some radio stations and held an appointment as chairman of the British Air Authority. Brasher had a long career as a sports writer with the London Observer, then went into business making climbing boots and founded the London Marathon.

“We’ve had dinner in London every five years,” Chattaway said. “Now that the shadows are lengthening, it’s prudent to have dinner every year.”

Meanwhile, the four-minute mile became almost routine, the record lowered now to Noureddine Morceli’s 3:44.39. In the first 40 years after Bannister broke 4 minutes, 703 different runners cracked the barrier. Through last November, 226 American men had done it.

Bannister, 70, knows all about that, noting, “As Louis XIV said, ‘Apres moi, le deluge.”’