For many years, many believed that running a mile in less than four minutes was a feat no human being ever would be able to accomplish. “the average running pace around the world” and “in the US” is over twice as long— for men as well as women. Yet at Iffley Road track at Oxford on Thursday, May 6, 1954, British athlete and medical student Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, and in weather that had been decidedly less than ideal.
Before Bannister broke “this threshold, Sweden’s Gunder Hägg (the man winning the the race in the image below) had held the record world record for the mile. He held it for nine years; in 1945 he finished the mile in 4 minutes, 1.3 seconds.
On May 6, 1954, Bannister “was running for the Amateur Athletic Association [AAA] against his alma mater, Oxford University.” Still, as you will hear in this video, Bannister was grateful to have set his record there. He planned the race with two friends and fellow runners — Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway — who agreed to serve as pacemakers for him.
Having accomplished his objective against the backdrop of a widely-held assumption that doing so was impossible, Bannister changed the narrative completely. He “helped shift the entire paradigm through which other runners viewed the world and in turn helped redefine what the human body could achieve.”
Success coach Jeff Heggie puts it this way:
As important as anything, Bannister broke a psychological barrier with this run. This once believed impossible record only lasted for 46 days before Australian runner John Landy shaved 1.5 seconds off of his time. By the end of 1957, 16 runners had logged sub-4-minute miles. Since that time more than 1,400 runners have broken the 4 minute mile and the current record stands at 3:43.13. An impossible task until Bannister changed that belief.
By the end of 1957, 16 runners had completed the mile in less than four minutes.
Here is a chart showcasing various times of individuals who ran the mile in then-record times. Keep in mind that these are runners with record times, not all the runners who ran the mile in less than four minutes.
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top image credit: Photo by Linda Perez Johannessen on Unsplash