Breaking Barriers In the mid 1880’s serious thought was given to breaking what was seen as an impenetrable barrier; the four minute mile. The best athletes, the most brilliant coaches across the world all attempted, and failed to break this barrier. It even got to the point that experts had predicted how and when it would be broken; 20 degrees centigrade, no wind, a hard, dry clay track and a large boisterous crowd.
Cassandra Jones Editor at large
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And yet people still failed. The athletes came up short. They kept coming perilously close; the Australian John Landy ran a series of races around the 4.02 mark. Yet everyone kept failing. On the day of the fateful race, 6th May 1954, Bannister spent his morning working at the teaching hospital where he was training to become a doctor. Sharpened his spikes and rubbed graphite on them waiting to get the train to Oxford for the 6pm race. The crowd was small, about 3,000, the wind had been howling for most of the day, it was cold, it was wet…a typical English day really; and not what the experts had been predicting. Norris McWhirter, he of Guinness Book of Records fame was the announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event nine, the one mile: first, number forty one, R. G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which—subject to ratification—will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire and World Record. The time was three... The crowd went wild!!!! The record had finally fallen. And then it fell again, John Landy broke it again 46 days later taking another second of the time. And then again and again. Within a year, three runners broke the record in the same race and over the last 50 years more than 1,000 more people have breached the barrier. 3
