On the morning of 6 May 1954, Sir Roger Bannister did the impossible.
The Daily Telegraph, at the time had described the sub-four-minute mile as “sport’s greatest goal”, something “as elusive and seemingly unattainable as Everest” (another apparently impossible human achievement that had recently been chalked off by Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay).
Indeed, Bannister had been told by physiologists that not only was running the four-minute mile impossible for an athlete to do, but attempting to do so was dangerous to one's health.
Born in Harrow, England, the then 25-year-old Oxford University medical student was regarded as Britain’s best middle-distance runner, but had recently experienced crushing disappointment after finishing fourth in the 1500 metres at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki – a race he had been widely expected to win.
The following months saw Bannister toying with the idea of giving up athletics, before he decided to set himself a new goal of becoming the First man to run a mile in under four minutes.
Inspired by his running hero Sydney Wooderson, who had made a remarkable comeback in 1945 by setting a new British record in the same event, Bannister set out to achieve the holy grail of athletics.
The scene for Bannister’s finest moment was an early race in the 1954 season at Oxford University’s ramshackle Iffley Road track, during the annual match between the Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) and the university.
Alongside Bannister, the two other principal runners involved for the AAA were his friends Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, with the attempt carefully planned between the three.
Chataway was an underbrewer at the Guinness Brewery in Park Royal, London. He would go on to introduce the race’s timekeeper and old university friend, Norris McWhirter, to the brewery’s owner, Sir Hugh Beaver, recommending him and his brother Ross as editors for the company’s new publication – a book that would compile superlatives to help settle pub arguments.
Recalling his burst of speed on the home stretch, Bannister says: “The earth seemed to move with me. I found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never knew existed.”
GWR Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday and Sir Roger Bannister in 2016