Roger Bannister, aged 25, to-day became the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. His time at the Iffley Road track, Oxford, in the annual match between the Amateur Athletic Association and Oxford University, was 3min. 59.4sec.
Bannister, a former president of the Oxford club and now a medical student nearing qualification, ran as first string for the visiting side against his old university. The race was carefully planned and Bannister received considerable assistance by the intelligent pace-making of C.W. Brasher, a former Cambridge runner, who led the field through the first quarter-mile in 57.3 sec. and reached the half-mile in 1min. 58sec. with Bannister three yards in the rear.
From there C.J. Chataway took up the lead and reached the three-quarter mile mark in 3min. 0.4sec with Bannister at 3min 0.7sec. Bannister took the lead with some 350 yards to go, passed one unofficial timekeeper at the 1,500-metre mark in 3min. 43sec. equalling the world╒s record for that distance, and thereafter, throwing in all his reserves, he broke the tape in 3min. 59.4sec.
The afternoon had been squally, but just before the race, which started at
6 p.m., the weather relented slightly. Nonetheless conditions were far from ideal. After the news that a world record had been broken, and a great athletic landmark passed, there was pandemonium among the spectators.
The last Englishman to hold the world record for the mile was Sydney Wooderson, with a time of 4min. 6.4sec. set in London in 1937. Since then there have been five improvements by the two Swedish athletes Gunder Haegg and Arne Andersson, with Haegg holding the current official world record of 4min. 1.4sec.
Bannister, who was running his first competitive race this season, thus beats the strong challenge for the four-minute mile from the Australian, John Landy, now in Scandinavia for the purpose, and the American, Wesley Santee.
