He was only 17, at a time when many of his fellow freshmen were experienced, sometimes battle-scarred, ex-servicemen. Pushed hard by his school, he sat his university entrance exams at 16, and won a scholarship to begin medical studies at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1946. There, he played rugby, rowed a bit, and ran the legs off everyone else, older and younger but he was equally enthusiastic about medicine as a teenager he listed his role models as Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie and England’s favourite middle-distance runner, Sydney Wooderson. The family was evacuated to Bath during the second world war, before moving back to London, where Roger attended University College school, Hampstead. He never competed again.īannister, whose long career as a distinguished neurologist overlapped his short athletic career, was born in Harrow, north London, the son of Ralph Bannister, a worker from the depressed cotton towns of Lancashire who had landed a clerical post in the civil service in London, and his wife, Alice. Both men, applauded to the skies by the packed stadium, had run under four minutes.īannister trained on for one final triumph at the end of August, a prestigious, hard-fought but ultimately comfortable victory in the European 1500 metres in Berne, Switzerland, in a championship record – a commanding exhibition from a thoroughly confident athlete in a week when he was the only British man to win a gold medal. He was away, the Australian could not respond, and the Mile of the Century was Bannister’s. At the end of the final bend he flung himself past Landy’s right shoulder just, as chance would have it, Landy glanced anxiously over his left. By the bell he was back to Landy’s shoulder, but tired. Then gradually, halfway through the third lap, Landy began to slow and Bannister’s even stride pulled the gap tighter and tighter. Landy led from the gun, increased his lead as the first two laps progressed to seven yards, 10 yards, 15 yards at one point. Roger Bannister, centre, with Chris Chataway, right, and Chris Brasher after his record-breaking run at Iffley Road on. He collapsed at the finish, and revived to hear another friend, the statistician Norris McWhirter, announce over the public address: “a track record, English Native record, British National, British All-Comers, European, British Empire and World record the time: three …” (the rest drowned out by cheering) “… minutes, 59.4 seconds.”
Bannister, always on the leader’s shoulder, needed to run the final quarter-mile in 59 seconds. Brasher led for a metronomic two laps, Chataway for the next one, and a bit more.
On that momentous evening, with the stiff breeze moderating and the showers stopping barely an hour before the race, the plan worked. With two friends providing the most elite pacemaking squad that could be imagined – Chataway, who later that summer took the 5000m world record, and Chris Brasher, who won an Olympic gold medal in the steeplechase two years later – Bannister devised an even-paced three-and-a-quarter-lap schedule that would leave him to capitalise on his speed and strength in the final 350 or so yards.
Expectations of a four-minute mile were now at boiling point, and Bannister knew he had to strike fast. Early in 1954 Landy announced that he would spend the early part of the summer training – and racing – in Finland. Bannister himself, with the help of Christopher Chataway, broke the British record in Oxford with 4min 3.6sec.īut nobody came really close to the four-minute mark indeed, no one seriously threatened the world record of 4min 1.4sec set in 1945 by the Swede Gunder Hägg. In Australia, John Landy ran four separate races in and around 4min 2sec. In the US, Wes Santee clocked 4min 2.4sec, and some weeks later failed in a widely publicised attempt at a four-minute mile. Runners in Europe, the US and Australia had whittled down their mile times as the world record assumed an ever-increasing importance.
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