3:59.4
A tribute to Roger Bannister, who passed away on Saturday, from the New York Times:
On the morning of May 6, 1954, a Thursday, Roger Bannister, 25, a medical student in London, worked his usual shift at St. Mary���s Hospital and took an early afternoon train to Oxford. He had lunch with some old friends, then met a couple of his track teammates, Christopher Chataway and Chris Brasher. As members of an amateur all-star team, they were preparing to run against Oxford University.
About 1,200 people showed up at Oxford���s unprepossessing Iffley Road track to watch, and though the day was blustery and damp ��� inauspicious conditions for a record-setting effort ��� a record is what they saw. Paced by Chataway and Brasher and powered by an explosive kick, his signature, Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes ��� 3:59.4, to be exact ��� becoming the first man ever to do so, breaking through a mystical barrier and creating a seminal moment in sports history.
Bannister���s feat was trumpeted on front pages around the world. He had reached ���one of man���s hitherto unattainable goals,��� The New York Times declared. His name, like those of Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones and Jesse Owens, became synonymous with singular athletic achievement.
Then, astonishingly ��� at least from the vantage point of the 21st century ��� Bannister, at the height of his athletic career, retired from competitive running later that year, to concentrate on medicine.
���Now that I am taking up a hospital appointment,��� he said in an address to the English Sportswriters Association that December, ���I shall have to give up international athletics. I shall not have sufficient time to put up a first-class performance. There would be little satisfaction for me in a second-rate performance, and it would be wrong to give one when representing my country.���
After a long career as a neurologist, both in research and clinical practice, Bannister, who was knighted in 1975, died on Saturday in Oxford, his family confirmed in a statement on Sunday. He was 88.
His record-setting feat would be surpassed many times. Runners in the next decades would be faster, stronger, better-equipped, better-trained and able to devote much of their time to the pursuit while benefiting from advances in sports science. But their later success did not dim the significance of Bannister���s run.
���He was running on 28 training miles a week,��� Sebastian Coe, who set the world record in the mile three different times, once said. ���He did it on limited scientific knowledge, with leather shoes in which the spikes alone probably weighed more than the tissue-thin shoes today, on tracks at which speedway riders would turn up their noses. So as far as I���m concerned, that was one of the great runs of all time.���
