Roger Bannister's Record Feat

BY MICHAEL MINK

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

For Roger Bannister, the gauntlet was thrown down: Someone told him his goal was "impossible."

Until 1954, the fastest any human ran a mile was 4 minutes 1.3 seconds. That record stood eight years. Many thought it would stand forever.

Bannister decided it wouldn't.

When Bannister earned a scholastic scholarship to study medicine at Oxford University, he began running in earnest. He'd run track in high school, but at Oxford the ante was upped — and the competitive Bannister obliged. "In Oxford, I had been told, a man without a sport is like a ship without a sail," Bannister wrote in "Four-Minute Mile."

As a freshman running the mile against Cambridge in 1947, Bannister won by 20 yards with a time of 4:30.8. In the process, he learned about his love for running.

"I had expressed something of my attitude to life. . . . It was intensity of living, joy in struggle, freedom in toil, satisfaction at the mental and physical cost. It gave me a glimpse of the future because I had discovered my gift for running," Bannister, now 74, said.

With supreme effort and laserlike dedication, Bannister did just that. On May 6, 1954, he became the first man to break the four-minute mile barrier with a time of 3:59.4. It was a milestone so important that Sports Illustrated rated it, along with the climbing of Mount Everest, as the most significant athletic feat of the 20th century.

Realizing that he must be in top shape mentally as well as physically, Bannister psyched himself up from the beginning. He vowed never to allow "passing disappointments at a later stage" from stopping him. In addition, he wouldn't let his training interfere with his studies. "I must be the international athlete who trained least," he said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement.

Bannister compensated by training smart. He trusted his own instincts rather than listen to coaches who ordered him to run or exercise a certain way and wouldn't provide the intellectually curious Bannister with explanations as to why.

"Running thrives in an atmosphere of interplay of ideas about training. I have always learned more from other athletes than from professional coaches," Banniser wrote.

Figuring the best athletes had the best approaches to his sport, he borrowed from the training methods of Gunder Haegg, then the Swedish world record holder in the mile. Haegg's regimen called for alternating gentle and fast running at intervals of 100 yards to one mile. Bannister began following the program while keeping his workouts to half an hour, three to four days a week. Consistent training, rather than long, arduous workouts, was the key for Bannister.

"I felt about running that it was my task to find out what suited me and what didn't suit me, (to improve) and not let my performance go down because I was training too hard," he said.

The Payoff

Steadily, Bannister's time in the mile improved. In 1948 he ran a 4:17.2 mile at the Amateur Athletics Association Championships. From 1949 to 1951, he reduced his time in the mile at track meets to 4:11.1, 4:09.9 and 4:07.8.

It wasn't just the training. Bannister's constant analysis of his performance was crucial. After every race, every run, Bannister mentally retraced his steps to figure out what he did wrong and right. "Improvement in running depends on continuous self-discipline by the athlete himself, on acute observation of his reaction to races and training, and above all on judgment, which he must learn for himself," he wrote.

In the spring of 1951, Bannister decided he needed to dig deeper to enhance his track performance. He turned to his other interest — studying medicine — to help him perfect his strategy.

He studied how the body reacts to exhaustion. What he learned led him to modify his running technique. "The weak link in the body (that) seems to prevent a man from running middle distance races faster is the failure of the supply of oxygen to the muscles. If unnecessary movements are eliminated, oxygen consumption is less and running efficiency is consequently improved. This is why running in a relaxed way imposes less strain without loss of speed," Bannister wrote.

At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Bannister finished a disappointing fourth in the 1,500-meter race. His goal of an Olympic gold medal had been thwarted.

Rather than get discouraged, Bannister set his sights higher: becoming the fastest runner on record. While he still stuck to his 30-minute training day because of his medical responsibilities, he intensified his program to 10 quarter-mile sprints of 60-66 seconds. By the 1953 meet at Motspur Park, Bannister had reduced his time in the mile to 4:02.0.

He felt the key to breaking the four-minute mile was exact pacing. "You could only break a time really by running evenly. It's a question of spreading the available energy, aerobic and anaerobic, evenly over four minutes," he said.

Against The Wind

Bannister felt he was completely prepared to attempt to break the four-minute mile on May 6, 1954, at Iffley Road, Oxford. But there was an external obstacle: a 15-mph crosswind. Still, he decided to press on. Other runners in other countries were knocking on the under-four-minute-mile door. His coach, Franz Stampfl, told him, "If you have an opportunity — not a perfect opportunity — and you don't take it, you may never have another chance."

Although he broke the four-minute mile that day to a roaring crowd and enjoyed a joyous celebration on the track with those who'd help train him, Bannister didn't get a swelled head. His view of sport itself has always been that there's a bigger picture.

"The Greek ideal was that sport should be a preparation for life in general," he said. "The Greeks were stimulated by the idea of competition. They believed that competition, whether in music or drama, in art or poetry, brought out the best in man. The important thing is that we should perform ourselves rather than watch others."

While he continued running, Bannister was ready for new hurdles and redirected his focus on medicine. Here, too, he aimed for the pinnacle of the field. He made neurology his specialty, and served as master of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1985 to 1993.