On the day of his four-minute mile in the Amateur Athletic Association vs. Stampfl had Bannister, Chataway and their friend Christopher Brasher run 10 laps of 440 yards - a quarter mile - with a two-minute recovery between each.įrom December 1953 to April 1954, the trio reduced their time for the quarter from 66 to 58.9 seconds. Instead, he placed fourth, and his crushing disappointment motivated him to pursue the four-minute mile and break Swedish runner Gunder Hägg’s record of 4:01.4, which had stood since 1945.Īs an amateur competitor focused on his studies, Bannister trained about 25 miles a week, much less than today’s elite middle-distance runners, and for many years he was essentially self-coached.ĭetermined to break the sub-four-minute mile, he began training in late 1953 with Austrian-born coach Franz Stampfl. He was favored to win the gold for Britain in the 1,500. He completed his undergraduate degree in 1950 and, by 1951, he held the British national title in the mile and was readying for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. In the back straight of the final lap, he once recalled, “I had suddenly tapped that hidden source of energy I always suspected I possessed.” He won in 4:30.8. He entered Oxford’s Exeter College, and his diligence in shoveling snow off the Iffley Road track scored him a spot as a third-string miler in the meet with rival Cambridge, held on the day before his 18th birthday. “I just ran anywhere and everywhere - never because it was an end in itself, but because it was easier for me to run than to walk,” he told authors Cordner Nelson and Roberto Quercetani for their book “The Milers.” His childhood and teen years found him sprinting up the steps of Beechen Cliff on his way to school in Bath, hiking 10 miles a day as a summertime tour guide, and biking the 100-mile trip from Bath to London in a day to visit a friend as a 13-year-old. Roger Gilbert Bannister was born in Harrow, now a borough of London, on March 23, 1929, and he spent part of his childhood in Bath. “I cannot understand people who are nostalgic for the 1950s - they were very tough times.” “All that training was done on a limited diet,” Bannister once said. He ended competitive racing at age 25, having never earned prize money, to focus on his career as a neurologist.Īll but a few months of his training coincided with the 14 years of food rationing in England during and after World War II. Two months later, he claimed the European title for the 1,500 meters in Bern, Switzerland.
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