“It’s amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the four-minute mile,” Bannister said in an interview with the Associated Press in 2012.īannister was born on March 23, 1929, in the London borough of Harrow. Bannister regarded that his greatest race because it came against his fiercest rival. The 3 was all that mattered.īannister followed up his milestone a few months later by beating Australia’s John Landy in the “Miracle Mile” or “Mile of the Century” at the Empire Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, with both men clocked at less than four minutes. The rest was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. He put on a furious kick over the final 300 yards and nearly collapsed as he crossed the finish line. With two friends running with him as pacesetters, Bannister churned around Oxford’s Iffley Road track. But then, shortly after 6 p.m., the wind subsided, and the race was on. On the day he made history, May 6, 1954, Bannister looked up at the white-and-red English flag whipping in the wind atop a church and figured he would have to call off the attempt. “There is not a single athlete of my generation who was not inspired by Roger and his achievements both on and off the track,” Coe tweeted. Olympic gold medalist Sebastian Coe, president of the IAAF, the international sports governing body, said Bannister’s death was a “day of intense sadness both for our nation and for all of us in athletics.” “I’m far more content with that than I am about any of the running I did earlier.” “I wouldn’t claim to have made any great discoveries, but at any rate I satisfactorily inched forward in our knowledge of a particular aspect of medicine,” he said. While he will forever be remembered for his running, Bannister said he considered his contributions to neurology more satisfying. Prime Minister Theresa May saluted Bannister as a “British sporting icon whose achievements were an inspiration to us all.” The image of the young Bannister - head tilted back, eyes closed and mouth agape as he strained across the finishing tape - captured the public’s imagination, made him a global celebrity and boosted the morale of Britons still suffering through austerity measures.īannister soon retired from competition and went on to a long and distinguished career in medicine, and his mark was broken over and over again, with the world record for the mile now at 3:43.13. On a typically cool, wet and blustery English day in May nearly 64 years ago, Bannister put on his spikes and ran four laps around a cinder track in 3:59.4, for one of the defining sporting achievements of the 20th century.

Roger bannister dies