With the barrier now removed, it only took Landy six weeks to better Bannister’s record, running a time of 3:58. “There was a mystique, a belief that it couldn’t be done,” Bannister would later say, “but I think it was more of a psychological barrier than a physical barrier.” It was rather a sporting first that quickly became an earthly representation of an otherworldly standard.

With this, Bannister had become the “miracle miler.” Again, the religious reference served an important purpose, emphasizing that Bannister’s finishing time was more than a cluster of numbers. Off to the side, the onlookers marvel as they document his momentous achievement. Head thrust back, eyes closed, mouth agape pulling for air, arms drifting outward, legs pushing forward. Few images are more iconic in the world of sports than that of Bannister finishing this race at Iffley Road track. Armed with an extraordinary physique, a rigorous and smart training regimen, and a cadre of capable pacers, Bannister crossed the line at 3:59.4. Then on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister finally did what many said could not be done.

Nature and God stood between humans and the sub-four mile. But Landy’s repeated failures to break four only fueled skepticism. “The four minute mile isn’t just a possibility, it’s a certainty,” announced distance runner Fred Wilt. This mark stood untested until 1953, when Australian John Landy seemed poised to make history. Hamilton’s prediction seemed prophetic when Swedish miler Gunder Hägg posted a world record time of 4:01.4 in 1945. Running, he insisted, “is a natural performance, in which form changes very little, if it all.” Appeals to nature met with scientific data when the famed track coach Brutus Hamilton consulted a study by Finnish physicists and concluded that human beings would peak with a 4:01.6 mile. “It is a shame to belittle such a performance by talking glibly of a ‘four minute mile,’” the sportswriter thundered. Robert Edgren, however, was not impressed. In 1933, when New Zealand’s Jack Lovelock produced a 4:07.6 world record time, talk of a sub-four mile crept into the sports pages. “As heart and lungs are now made they could never stand the strain of a 4-minute pace without collapsing or running into serious results.” Impressive enough was this time that one track fan quipped in a letter to Grantland Rice that the sub-four mile was only possible with “the introduction of some stunt such as feeding the runner oxygen during the performance.” Rice agreed, adding that while technical events (jumps, throws) might benefit from material improvements, no innovation could similarly change distance running. In 1923, the Finnish distance running legend Paavo Nurmi set a world record of 4:10. Indeed, for many years, the four-minute mile was little more than a launching pad for debating the human body’s intended design. As sportswriter Gary Smith observed, “Four minutes was a barrier that had withstood decades of human yearning and anguish, a figure that seemed so perfectly round-four laps, four quarter miles, four-point-oh-oh minutes-that it seemed God himself had established it as man’s limit.”

Instead, it framed the magnitude of this barrier, its allure as well as its seeming impossibility.Īdditionally, the symmetry and elegance of this particular distance and time was custom-made for sacred reference. When the recently deceased Roger Bannister began running track and studying medicine at Oxford, the four-minute mile had become known as “trackdom’s Holy Grail.” The religious allusion here was hardly accidental. Martin Marty Center Dropdown for Martin Marty Center.Our Community Dropdown for Our Community.Research & Faculty Dropdown for Research & Faculty.Undergraduate Program in Religious Studies.

Roger bannister first 4 minute mile