page_title: Roger Bannister
section_title: Sub-4-minute mile
hierarchical_section_title: Roger Bannister / Athletics career / Sub-4-minute mile
caption_attribution_description: English: Blue plaque at Iffley Road Track, Oxford, England.
context_page_description: Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister CH CBE FRCP was a British middle-distance athlete and neurologist who ran the first sub-4-minute mile.
  At the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Bannister set a British record in the 1500 metres and finished in fourth place. This achievement strengthened his resolve to become the first athlete to finish the mile run in under four minutes. He accomplished this feat on 6 May 1954 at Iffley Road track in Oxford, with Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher providing the pacing. When the announcer, Norris McWhirter, declared "The time was three...", the cheers of the crowd drowned out Bannister's exact time, which was 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. He had attained this record with minimal training, while practising as a junior doctor. Bannister's record lasted just 46 days.
  Bannister went on to become a neurologist and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, before retiring in 1993. As Master of Pembroke, he was on the governing body of Abingdon School from 1986 to 1993. When asked whether the 4-minute mile was his proudest achievement, he said he felt prouder of his contribution to academic medicine through research into the responses of the nervous system.
context_section_description: This historic event took place on 6 May 1954 during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University at Iffley Road Track in Oxford, watched by about 3,000 spectators. With winds of up to twenty-five miles per hour (40 km/h) before the event, Bannister had said twice that he preferred not to run, to conserve his energy and efforts to break the 4-minute barrier; he would try again at another meet. However, the winds dropped just before the race was scheduled to begin, and Bannister did run.
  The pace-setters from his major 1953 attempts, future Commonwealth Games gold medallist Christopher Chataway from the 2 May attempt, and future Olympic Games gold medallist Chris Brasher from the 27 June attempt, combined to provide pacing for Bannister's run. The race was broadcast live by BBC Radio and commentated by 1924 Olympic 100 metres champion Harold Abrahams, of Chariots of Fire fame.
  Bannister had begun his day at a hospital in London, where he sharpened his racing spikes and rubbed graphite on them so they would not pick up too much cinder ash. He took a mid-morning train from Paddington Station to Oxford, nervous about the rainy, windy conditions that afternoon.
  Being a dual-meet format, there were seven men entered in the mile: Alan Gordon, George Dole and Nigel Miller from Oxford University; and four British AAA runners: Bannister, his two pacemakers Brasher and Chataway, and Tom Hulatt. Nigel Miller arrived as a spectator and he only realised that he was due to run when he read the programme. Efforts to borrow a running kit failed and he could not take part, thus reducing the field to six.
  The race went off as scheduled at 6:00 pm, and Brasher and Bannister went immediately to the front of the pack. Brasher (wearing No. 44) led both the first lap in 58 seconds and the half-mile in 1:58, with Bannister (No. 41) tucked in behind, and Chataway (No. 42) a stride behind Bannister. Chataway moved to the front after the second lap and maintained the pace with a 3:01 split at the final lap bell. Chataway continued to lead around the front turn until Bannister began his finishing kick with about 275 yards to go (just over half a lap), running the last lap in just under 59 seconds.
  The stadium announcer for the race was Norris McWhirter, who went on to co-publish and co-edit the Guinness Book of Records. He teased the crowd by delaying his announcement of Bannister's race time for as long as possible:
  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 roar of the crowd drowned out the rest of the announcement. Bannister's time was 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
  The claim that a four-minute mile was once thought to be impossible by "informed" observers was and is a widely propagated myth created by sportswriters and debunked by Bannister himself in his memoir, The Four Minute Mile (1955).
  The reason the myth took hold was that four minutes was a round number that lay slightly out of reach of the world record (by just 1.4 seconds) for nine years, which was longer than it might otherwise have been due to the effect of the Second World War in interrupting athletic progress in the combatant countries. The Swedish runners, Gunder Hägg and Arne Andersson, in a series of head-to-head races in the period 1942–45, had already lowered the world mile record by five seconds to the pre-Bannister record. Knowledgeable track fans are still most impressed by the fact that Bannister ran a four-minute mile on very low-mileage training by modern standards.
  Just 46 days later, on 21 June 1954, Bannister's record was broken by his rival Landy in Turku, Finland, with a time of 3 minutes 57.9 seconds, which the IAAF ratified as 3 minutes 58.0 seconds due to the rounding rules then in effect.
caption: Blue plaque at Oxford University's Iffley Road Track, recording the first sub-4-minute mile run by Roger Bannister on 6 May 1954
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