as we approach the 60th anniversary of the four

8/12/2019 As We Approach the 60th Anniversary of the Four

1/5

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the four-minute mile, Mary Beard

reflects on what has changed in the sport of running.

In a few days' time it will be the 60th anniversary of the first four-minute mile. On6 May 1954, at Iffley Road sports ground in Oxford, Roger Bannister, supportedby his friends Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, ran a mile race in threeminutes 59.4 seconds. If we leave aside the story of James Parrott, who issupposed to have raced a mile around the streets of Shoreditch in three minutessomething on 9 May 1770, this was the first time a human being had cracked thefour-minute mile barrier. Certainly, the first time it was fully ratified by an array ofofficial stopwatches.

When I was a child in the late 1950s, my parents taught me about Bannister'smile just as they taught me about the first climbing of Mount Everest. These weremeant, I suppose, to be patriotic lessons in the physical prowess of Britain andthe Commonwealth. I can still vividly conjure up in my mind the famous image ofBannister breaking through the finishing tape in triumph (though frankly I nowthink that he looks more in agony than in triumph).

But the whole occasion now feels strangely distant - part of a very different world

in sporting, and other, senses. That's partly because the four-minute mile is nolonger a particularly rare achievement. In fact, Bannister's record was brokenonly six weeks later, when the Australian runner John Landy cut the time to 3:58seconds, and since then hundreds of men (and they are all men) have run thedistance below the magic four minutes. The current world record - set in 1999 bythe Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj - stands at just over 3:43 seconds.


2/5

And it's partly because the mile race itself is now a bit of a white elephant. It's stilla popular distance for fun-runs and demonstration events, but it's long beenovertaken for serious athletes by the 1500 metres (the "metric mile" as the Britishused, rather patronisingly, to call it).

But then there's also the whole ethos of the preparation for the race. Bannister'sown accounts of this are extremely engaging. He was, at the time, a final-yearmedical student in London, and his regular training consisted in running roundthe local park, either at lunchtime - or when he was bunking off his obstetricslectures (it's no coincidence, I suspect, that he became a neurologist rather thanan obstetrician). For the few months before the big event, he practised atweekends too with Brasher and Chataway, and took advice from Brasher's coach- often over baked beans on toast at a Lyons Corner House. As for hisequipment, just the day before the race he was found sharpening his runningspikes on a grindstone in the lab.

On the day itself he went to Oxford by train, had a look around the track, andthen went to have lunch (of ham salad) with some friends and their children. Itwas only when he went back to the track for the late afternoon start that hedecided that the wind had dropped enough to make it worth having a shot atbreaking the four-minute barrier.

This is a whole world away from the regimes that modern athletes undergo - withtheir retinues of physiologists, psychiatrists and dieticians (I very much doubt thatthe likes of Jessica Ennis or Mo Farah often sit down for a plate of baked beansin our own equivalent of a Lyons Corner House, or that they would be allowedout for lunch with friends just before a race). And it is a world away from thescientific calculations - on wind-resistance, friction, and so forth - that determine


3/5

the tactics of modern races. The film of the Iffley Road event shows ChrisBrasher - who presumably wanted to see where he was running, in an agebefore contact lenses - wearing what look like old-fashioned National Healthspectacles throughout. Just think of the wind resistance in that.

Where modern runners, in other words, have become something not far short ofspecially constructed machines, Bannister and his friends remained well-trained(but not over-trained) human bodies.

Or so it seems at first sight. But, beneath the surface, the picture's morecomplicated. Even in Bannister's charming description of his self-consciouslyamateurish success, we get glimpses of a more hard-headed professionalism.So-called "effortless superiority" is rarely as "effortless" as it pretends to be. Itwasn't all do-it-yourself preparation on the lab grindstone. He himself explainsthat he had some super-light running shoes specially made (4oz rather than 6oz

per shoe - enough, he reckoned, to make all the difference between coming inunder four minutes and not). He was also scientifically interested in how runningtimes could be improved. One of his first academic papers, published in July1954, was about the effects on athletic performance of taking supplementaryoxygen (using himself and Norris McWhirter - one of the founders of theGuinness Book of Records - among the experimental subjects). There isabsolutely no suggestion that the four-minute race was oxygen-assisted, butBannister had more of a stake in the hi-tech science of running than we mightimagine.

Roger Bannister (left) and Chris Brasher racing at Iffley Road in May, 1954

There was also controversy at the time about the methods used to break therecord. The mainstream press was ecstatic in its celebration of Bannister's race,


4/5


5/5

as we approach the 60th anniversary of the four

Documents