How Roger Bannister beat John Landy and smashed the four-minute mile

It was considered beyond human capability, to run under four minutes for the mile. But 70 years ago this week, Roger Bannister smashed it, beating Australia’s John Landy to be first.

Roger Bannister in his under-four-minute run in 1954. The crowd had risen to their feet, cheering louder and louder with each lap. Picture: supplied

Seventy years ago this week, on a day that was so windy and rainy the attempt was almost cancelled, the British distance runner Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile.

It was an extraordinary effort on a cinder track at Oxford to smash what many believed was unattainable, and Bannister, later Sir Roger, beat Australia’s own gentleman athlete John Landy, to the record books and track immortality.

Beating four minutes for the mile – 1609m – was considered beyond human capability, although at the time three brilliant athletes were threatening the mark: Bannister, Landy and an American Wes Santee.

British Olympic athletic medal winner and record setter Sebastian Coe told The Guardian recently: “On every metric, I think it is arguably at the top of all sporting achievements in the last 100 years.”

Bannister, a trainee doctor, trained for the mile distance doing increasingly harsh interval training sets of 400m during his lunch break between hospital shifts at St Mary’s in London, and had set off for the Iffley Road running track in Oxford earlier that day mentally preparing to delay the record attempt because of bad weather.

But his coach Franz Stampfl, an Austrian who had been interred during World War II in Australia, (and who would later return to live in Victoria training other athletes such as Ralph Doubell), had other ideas. He told Bannister that to forgo this particular opportunity while he was in such top shape would be a big mistake and one that he would rue.

Bannister had delayed retiring from the sport after a disappointing fourth place in the 1952 Olympics two years earlier and the four minutes had been his cherished goal.

Roger Bannister, centre, Chris Brasher, left, and Chris Chattaway after Bannister broke the four-minute mile. Picture: supplied

By late of that afternoon of May 6, 1954, the wind had died down and the rain had paused and Bannister pulled aside his friends and race pacesetters Christopher Chataway and Christopher Brasher and decided to go for it. The crowd settled on the small grassed rises in their overcoats and the air was electric in anticipation.

From the get go, Bannister said later, his legs felt strong, and the crowd had risen to their feet, cheering louder and louder with each lap.

“We seemed to be going so slowly and impatiently I shouted (to Brasher) go faster, but Brasher kept his head and didn’t change the pace. I went on worrying about the pace until I heard the first lap time of 57.5 seconds,’’ Bannister said.

In the last 400m Bannister just put his head down and powered through the pain for a 59s final lap.

In his book The First Four Minutes, Bannister recalled that moment: “The world seemed to stand still, or did not exist. The only reality was the next 200 yards of track under my feet. The tape meant finality – extinction perhaps.

“I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well. I drove on, impelled by a combination of fear and pride. I felt a moment of a lifetime had come.” He would later recall: “I knew that I had done it before I heard the time.”

Bannister had stopped the clocks – hand-timed by a bevy of officials – at 3 minutes 59.4s and was immediately surrounded by excited spectators. Grainy footage from the day show him soon afterwards hand to head, swooning after the exhaustive effort and propped up by Stampfl and others.

Roger Bannister on the spot where 50 years ago he became the first man to break the four-minute mile, at Iffley Road athletic track in Oxford in 2004. Picture: AP

Within hours he was sitting in the BBC studios recounting the time, and was lauded around the world as a superhuman. Smashing the barrier has since become as famous as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s climbing of Everest, or putting the man on the moon.

Bannister said that the time barrier had captured the public’s imagination, because it was to do four symmetrical laps of one minute each but that it had proven elusive for so long.

“It was just something that caught the public’s imagination. I think it still remains something that is of interest and intrigue,” he said in 2014.

Less than six weeks after Bannister’s magical run, Landy also broke the four minute mile mark, and set a new world record of 3 mins 57.9 seconds running at a competition in Turku, Finland. That world mark would last for three years.

Roger Bannister, left, and John Landy during the British Empire Games in Vancouver, 1954. Picture: supplied

The brilliant running of both men created an eagerly anticipated clash at the Empire Games in Vancouver, Canada, later that same year. It was Land,y the world record holder, up against Bannister the first man to crack the sub-four minute mark and billed as the “Miracle Mile’’. More than 100 million people listened on the radio, it was estimated, to hear the race and it lived up to its wildly hyped expectations.

Landy was leading until the final curve, whereupon he looked to his left to assess where Bannister was stationed, only to find the Englishman had rocketed around the blind side and that slight edge was the difference at the finish line. Both had clocked under four minutes, with Bannister’s winning time 3min 58.08s, less than a second ahead of Landy.

“The race between the two of us was a very, very special race,” Bannister later told the BBC.

“It determined which would be regarded as the superior runner in history.”

John Landy, left, and Roger Bannister in Melbourne in 1990. Picture: News Corp Australia

Bannister would retire later that year to concentrate on his medical degree and he would end up a distinguished neurologist and was knighted for later services to sport in 1975. He died on March 3, 2018, at the age of 88 after suffering Parkinson’s disease.

Landy had always recognised Bannister’s record efforts. But he said he had wanted to break the four-minute mark without having team mates help with the initial pace.

Landy would go on to be the governor of Victoria. He too suffered from Parkinson’s disease and died in February 24, 2022, aged 91.