Iffley, England
May 6, 1954
An important athletic achievement
a barrier broken
The "barrier" may have been an artificial time demarcation, but it held the world's imagination.
On this day, Roger Bannister achieved his dream and the world's admiration.
I was not quite 8, but I remember learning about it, as an almost mythical achievement.
Racing against time - challenging oneself to a faster performance.
racing against height - in jumping and vaulting
racing against distance - in jumping and throwing
having a common standard against which to compare oneself with others.
Earl Warren once said, as quoted inSports Illustrated,
I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records man’s accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man’s failures.
Today I would not fully agree - our papers have many triumphs on the front page. Sports pages also tell us of failures, as fans of the Washington Capitals have recently experienced.
Perhaps more than half a century later, Bannister' achievement does not seem so magnificent. In my mind, as a pure athletic advance it pales in comparison to this:
Or what may be the greatest athletic performance of all time, and not by a human:
Still, there is a purity of the achievement by Bannister. Yes, Secretariat smashes his opposition. Beamon smashes the world record by an incredible amount.
Bannister was not the only one pursuing that mythical barrier of 4 minutes. Some would demean his achievement because it was not a real race - he had "rabbits" - other men who devoted themselves to pacing him to give him a chance at the record.
No matter how it was achieved, regardless of comparisons to other achievements, it was in its own time recognized for how remarkable it was.
3:59:4
The first official four-minute mile.