Running Strong

Fifty years ago, a young English medical student ran four laps around a cinder track at Oxford University on a dank, blustery May evening in front of about 1,000 spectators.

With a late burst of speed, Roger Bannister shattered one of sport’s most fabled physical and psychological barriers -- running a mile in under four minutes.

Half a century later, that magic time -- 3:59.4 -- still stands out as one of the defining athletic achievements of the 20th century and a throwback to an amateur era not yet racked by the excesses of steroids, money and commercialization.

More than 2,000 runners around the globe have since broken the four-minute mark, and the world record is now 16 seconds faster.

The enduring image of Bannister -- head tilted back, eyes closed and mouth agape as he strains across the finishing tape on May 6, 1954 -- is testament to an extreme test of speed and stamina that captured the public’s imagination.

“It became a symbol of attempting a challenge in the physical world of something hitherto thought impossible,” Bannister, now a 75-year-old grandfather, told Associated Press at his modest Oxford home, minutes from the Iffley Road track where he made history. “I’d like to see it as a metaphor not only for sport, but for life and seeking challenges.”

At 25, Bannister became an international celebrity, right up there with Charles Lindbergh, and he lifted the spirits of a nation still recovering from World War II.

In 1953, after Edmund Hillary scaled Mount Everest and Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, Bannister felt inspired to make his own mark by attacking the four-minute mile.

“It stood there as something that was waiting to be done, and I was in the right place at the right time and was ready to do it,” he said in his deep, warm voice.

The big question was: Who would get there first? Bannister or one of his two great rivals, Australia’s John Landy or America’s Wes Santee?

“My attitude was that it can be done, and it will be done soon, and I’d rather it were done here,” Bannister said.

The mile had long held a special mystique. The round numbers -- 1 mile, 4 laps, 4 minutes -- were easy to grasp.

“The four-minute mile had a beauty about it, it had a symmetry,” said the late Norris McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records who announced Bannister’s record time in 1954. “If you’d said you’re only running 1,760 yards in 240 seconds, people would have yawned. The magic was this phrase -- 4-minute mile.”

Many thought the human body was incapable of running that fast, but when Finland’s Paavo Nurmi clocked 4:10.4 in 1923, the chase was on. Sweden’s Gunder Haegg lowered the mark to 4:01.4 in 1945 -- and it stood that way for nine years.

At Oxford’s Exeter College, Bannister had established himself as a talented miler with a devastating kick. With a best time of 4:07.6 in the mile, he entered the 1952 Helsinki Olympics as the favorite in the 1,500 meters.

Bannister’s goal was to win the gold medal and then retire to pursue his medical career. But his preparations were thrown off when Olympic officials added an extra round of heats, making him run on three straight days.

In the final, Bannister had nothing left in the home stretch and finished fourth. Believing he was a failure, he shelved retirement for another two years and recruited fellow British runner Chris Brasher to be his pacemaker in a bid to break the four-minute mile.

Bannister wasn’t the only athlete zeroing in on the mark. In Australia, Landy stunned the world by running 4:02.1 in December 1952. Then Santee, nicknamed the Kansas Cowboy, ran 4:02.4 in June 1953.

Bannister had been criticized for his relatively light training regimen. But he spent the winter of 1954 in strenuous workouts with Brasher and Chris Chataway. He ran during lunch breaks and, for the first time, he got help from a coach, Austria’s Franz Stampfl.

Bannister picked the first match race of the season -- Oxford vs. the Amateur Athletic Union at Iffley Road on May 6 -- to go for the record.

The morning of the race, he filed his spikes on a grindstone in his hospital lab, and rubbed graphite into the spikes so the track’s cinder ash wouldn’t stick.

The weather was miserable -- rainy, cool and windy. Bannister nearly wrote off the attempt when he arrived at the track to see a white-and-red English flag atop a nearby church tower whipping in near gale force winds.

But, a few minutes after 6 p.m., there was a lull and the flag fluttered gently.

“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.’ ”

Brasher went out in front as planned, with Bannister right behind. Bannister thought the early pace was too slow and shouted, “Faster! Faster!” But Brasher kept his rhythm and ran the first lap in 58 seconds.

Brasher took them through the half-mile in 1:58, then Chataway moved to the front on the third lap -- and a time of 3:00.5. Bannister would have to run the last lap in 59 seconds.

With 250 yards to go, he surged past Chataway, his long arms and legs pumping and his lungs gasping for oxygen.

“The world seemed to stand still, or did not exist,” he wrote in his book “The First Four Minutes.”

“The only reality was the next 200 yards of track under my feet. The tape meant finality -- extinction perhaps.

“I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well. I drove on, impelled by a combination of fear and pride.”

After breaking the tape, Bannister slumped into the arms of a friend, barely conscious.

The chief timekeeper was Harold Abrahams, the 100-meter gold medal winner at the 1924 Olympics whose story inspired the film “Chariots of Fire.” He handed McWhirter a piece of paper listing the official time. As soon as McWhirter read out the first number, he was drowned out by the cheering crowd.

“I can assure you the 59.4 wasn’t heard,” McWhirter said. “It just was the 3 they were worried about.”

McWhirter died on April 19 at 78. He spoke in a BBC documentary on the race. Brasher, who founded the London Marathon, died last year.

Bannister’s record stood just 46 days. With Chataway again setting the pace, Landy ran 3:57.9 in Turku, Finland, on June 21.

That set up the race which Bannister regards as his greatest -- beating Landy in the “mile of the century” at the Empire Games in Vancouver on Aug. 9, 1954. Bannister zipped past Landy around the last bend and won by five yards in 3:58.8. Landy clocked 3:59.6.

In his last major race, Bannister won the 1,500 meters in 3:43.8 at the European Games in Berne, Switzerland, on Aug. 29, 1954.

He went onto a distinguished career as a neurologist, served as chairman of the British Sports Council and master of Oxford’s Pembroke College.

Bannister was knighted in 1975, the same year a car crash ended his recreational running. He walks with a pronounced limp.

Visiting the Oxford track on a recent spring afternoon, he pointed to the church tower where the flag flew 50 years ago. The track now has a red synthetic surface and the wooden stands have been upgraded, but little else has changed.

Bannister stops to consider the current world record for the mile -- 3:43.13, set by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999. He predicts the mark will eventually be lowered to 3 1/2 minutes, but not for another 50 years.

Still, Bannister will be acclaimed as the man whose famous run transcended the sport. The lasting fascination, he says, springs from a simple message:

“A man could, with his own two feet, overcome all difficulties to reach a pinnacle upon which he could declare, ‘No one has ever done this before.’ ”