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Ahead of the Bannister Miles anniversary event in Oxford on May 6, Gavin Riley recalls a prophetic ‘demonstration mile’ featuring Roger Bannister at Motspur Park in 1953
When Roger Bannister achieved athletics immortality 70 years ago by becoming the first athlete to run the mile in under four minutes, it was the realisation of an ambition he had nursed privately for more than a year.
As a member of the last generation of “gentleman” athletes – well-educated, academically gifted, assured of a rewarding professional future – Bannister had to assume the role of the gifted amateur whose sport was merely a hobby and secondary to his core lifestyle. Hence his 40-minute lunchtime training sessions and exit from the sport at the age of 25.
Because of how society expected “Oxbridge” athletes to conduct themselves, Bannister could not be openly ambitious in his quest to run the first sub-four mile. But his ambition, desperately intense, was fleetingly on public display almost a year before his historic achievement in clocking 3:59.4 at Oxford in May 1954 – and I (aged 16) was there to witness it.
The occasion was the Surrey schools championships on a blisteringly hot June Saturday in 1953 at Motspur Park, scene of Sydney Wooderson’s one-mile and half-mile world records before the war. The diminutive Wooderson was also there that day, to be honoured in a march-past by the hundreds of schoolboy athletes.
The meeting was enjoying a lunchtime break when an electrifying but curious announcement was made over the loudspeaker: R G Bannister, the British record-holder, was about to run a demonstration mile. It is hard to imagine in this blasé, communication-overload age the dramatic impact of that out-of-the-blue news. For eight years, since the last year of the war, the world record had stood at 4:01.4. Talk of a four-minute mile had been rife all spring and early summer. Wes Santee in the United States (4:02.4), John Landy in Australia (4:02.0) and Bannister (4:03.6) were all closing in on the magic mark. Santee, it was known, was to make another attempt that very day.
So what was the purpose of Bannister’s unscheduled appearance? Was it merely a demonstration mile? Or did he mean business?
We were soon to find out. The 24-year-old British champion and two companions, training partner Chris Brasher and tall Australian Olympian Don MacMillan, quickly went to the start line. From my vantage point on a grassy bank at the beginning of the back straight, I sweatily clutched my cheap stopwatch.
At the gun MacMillan tore into the lead, followed by Bannister. A puzzled roar went round the ground when it was seen that Brasher was only jogging. Then all eyes returned to the fast-moving pair who were churning their way round the smooth black cinders.
The first lap was completed in just under a minute – right on four-minute schedule. As MacMillan powered past me and down the back straight for the second time, I heard Bannister call: “Faster, Don, faster!” Clearly this was no demonstration mile.
Halfway was reached in a tick under two minutes, and shortly after MacMillan and Bannister swept past my vantage point for the third time, the straining Australian dropped out. Bannister drove on alone down the back straight to the far bend, where the jogging Brasher’s role suddenly became clear. Glancing repeatedly over his left shoulder and calling encouragement to the British champion, Brasher picked up the pace and the pair strode through the three-quarter mark in 3:01.8.
On the last lap Bannister battled magnificently against his mounting oxygen debt, and to the wild excitement of my schoolmates my watch clocked him at 4:01.0 – a new world record. Alas, the drama of the occasion had warped my judgment and the official time was announced as 4:02.0. It was the third fastest mile of all time, a British and British Empire (Commonwealth) record. At least, that was the way the sporting public saw it.
Officialdom took a different view. Meeting just two weeks later, the British Amateur Athletics Board (BAAB) ratified Bannister’s 4:03.6, set at Oxford in May. But faced with a precedent (which no bureaucracy welcomes) it disallowed his Motspur Park effort on the basis that it did not regard individual record attempts to be in the best interests of athletics.
The board said it had no doubt the time was accomplished, and it appreciated the public enthusiasm for record performances and the natural and commendable desire for athletes to accomplish them. However, it did not consider the event was a bona fide competition according to the rules.
Bannister’s momentous achievement barely made the three London Saturday evening papers. But extensive press coverage on the Sunday and the Monday concentrated on the secrecy surrounding the record attempt and paid little attention to the race tactics.
Bannister himself, wary of journalists, disappeared immediately after the race with Brasher and Chris Chataway to climb remote mountains in Wales. On his return he refused to say anything to the press when the “record” was rejected. Privately, he accepted the ruling, though he indicated he would have taken a different view if he had beaten four minutes. Surprisingly, he maintained he knew nothing before the race about the tactics that were employed.
Less surprisingly, officialdom had the last word. In those days Britain wielded considerable influence in world athletics, and the international body subsequently followed the BAAB’s lead in framing rules regarding pacemaking.
My abiding memory of that glorious June day at Motspur Park is of going into the dressing rooms beneath the stand shortly after Bannister’s electrifying run. The great man was in the shower, oblivious of people passing by. As he soaped himself he was deep in thought, his eyes fixed on some distant horizon.
It was as if he had glimpsed history yet to come and knew beyond doubt exactly what his place in it would be.
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