Track & Field: Ten Years After

Of all track’s “impenetrable” barriers—every one of which has now been broken—none seemed more solid, a little over a decade ago, than the 4-min. mile. In the years between 1934 and 1942, the world’s best runners could only lower the record .6 sec. (from 4 min. 6.8 sec.), and in 1945 when Sweden’s Gunder Hagg ran a 4-min.-1.4-sec. mile, that seemed to be just about the ultimate of which any man was capable.

Then came Britain’s Roger Bannister, a dour, monkish medical student, who attacked the 4-min. mile the way a researcher attacks a microbe. Bannister approached the barrier as if it were strictly physical. He built up his lung capacity until he could absorb 51 qts. of oxygen a minute—125% the normal rate. He lowered his pulse rate to 50 beats per minute v. an average 72. Finally, on May 6, 1954, Bannister ran the mile in 3 min. 59.4 sec.—and nearly killed himself in the process. He was half unconscious with anoxia. His pulse had soared to 155 counts per minute. He was temporarily colorblind. “Real pain overtook me,” he wrote later. “It was as if all my limbs were caught in an ever-tightening vise.”

Roger Bannister retired at the end of the 1954 season, his theory proved—or so it seemed. But no, it turned out that the 4-min. barrier was only mental after all. One after another, other milers began to break 4 min. John Landy did it. Jim Beatty did it. Australia’s Herb Elliott did it 17 times. And there was New Zealand’s Peter Snell, who holds the current world record (3 min. 54.4 sec.) and breaks 4 min. practically every time he steps on a track. In one race alone last summer, the first six finishers all beat 4 min. By last week, the barrier that Bannister had labored so long and hard to crack had been smashed by 44 men from 15 nations a total of 143 times.

And what of Roger Bannister now? Married, 35, the father of four children, he is a consultant on neurology at three London hospitals. Last week, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his historic run, he went out to supper with Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, the two runners who had paced him to the record—and talked about a new “absolute limit” for the mile. He set it at “about 3 min. 30 sec. This is the physiological limit,” he said, “with our bodies made the way they are.”