The Perfect Mile

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First published in Great Britain in 2004.

This edition first published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2005

Copyright © Neal Bascomb 2004

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Neal Bascomb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007173723

Ebook Edition © MAY 2017 ISBN: 9780007382989

Version: 2017-05-11

DEDICATION

To Diane

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When an author sets out to investigate a legend, and there are few stories as legendary in sport as the pursuit of the four-minute mile, it is initially difficult to see the heroes around whom events unfolded as true flesh-and-blood individuals. Myth tends to wrap its arms around fact, and memory finds a comfortable groove and stays the course. What makes these individuals so interesting – their doubts, vulnerabilities, and failures – is often airbrushed out, and their victories characterised as faits accomplis. But true heroes are never as unalloyed as they first appear (thank goodness). We should admire them all the more for this fact.

Getting past the panegyrics that populate this history has been the real pleasure behind my research. No doubt there have been some very fine articles written about this story, but only by interviewing the principals – Roger Bannister, John Landy, and Wes Santee – and their close friends at the time does one do justice to the depth of this story. Their generosity in this regard has been without measure. These interviews, coupled with contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles as well as memoir accounts by several individuals involved in the events, serve as the basis of The Perfect Mile. With this material, the story almost wrote itself.

I have included collective references for those interested in knowing the sources behind particular conversations and scenes. No dialogue in this book was manufactured; it is either a direct quote from a secondary resource or from an interview. That said, half a century has passed since this story occurred. On some occasions, dialogue is represented as the best recollection of what was in all probability said. Furthermore, memory has its faults, and in those situations where interview subjects contradicted one another I almost always went with what the principal recollected. In those instances when contemporaneous sources (mainly newspaper articles) did not correspond with memory, I primarily went with the former, particularly when there were several sources indicating the same facts. Having inhabited this world for the past eighteen months, aswim in paper and interview tapes, I feel I have been a fairly accurate judge of the events as they happened. I hope that I have served the history of these heroes well.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Prologue

PART I

A Reason to Run

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

PART II

The Barrier

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

PART III

The Perfect Mile

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

References

Acknowledgements

Other Books By

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

Rudyard Kipling, ‘If …’

‘How did he know he would not die?’ a Frenchman asked of the first runner to break the four-minute mile. Half a century ago the ambition to achieve that goal equalled scaling Everest or sailing alone around the world. Most people considered running four laps of the track in four minutes to be beyond the limits of human speed. It was foolhardy and possibly dangerous to attempt. Some thought that rather than a lifetime of glory, honour, and fortune, a hearse would be waiting for the first man to accomplish the feat.

The four-minute mile: this was the barrier, both physical and psychological, that begged to be broken. The number had a certain mathematical elegance. As one writer explained, the figure ‘seemed so perfectly round – four laps, four quarter miles, four-point-oh-oh minutes – that it seemed God himself had established it as man’s limit’. Under four minutes: the place had the mysterious and heroic resonance of reaching sport’s Valhalla. For decades the world’s best middle-distance runners tried and failed. They came to within a second or so, but that was as close as they were able to get. Attempt after spirited attempt proved futile. Each effort was like a stone added to a wall that looked increasingly impossible to breach.

The four-minute mile had a fascination beyond its mathematical roundness and assumed impossibility. Running the mile was an art form in itself. The distance, unlike the 100-yard sprint or marathon, required a balance of speed and stamina. The person to break that barrier would have to be fast, diligently trained, and supremely aware of his body, so that he would cross the finish line just at the point of complete exhaustion. Further, the four-minute mile had to be won alone. There could be no team-mates to blame, no coach during half-time to inspire a comeback. One might hide behind the excuses of cold weather, an unkind wind, a slow track, or jostling competition, but ultimately, these obstacles had to be defied. Winning a foot race, particularly one waged against the clock, was a battle with oneself, over oneself.

In August 1952 the battle commenced. Three young men in their early twenties set out to be the first to break the barrier. One of them was Wes Santee, the ‘Dizzy Dean of the Cinders’. Santee was a natural athlete, the son of a Kansas ranch hand, born to run fast. He amazed crowds with his running feats, basked in the publicity, and was the first to announce his intention of running the mile in four minutes. ‘He just flat believed he was better than anybody else,’ said one sportswriter. Few knew that running was his escape from a brutal childhood.

Then there was John Landy, the Australian who trained harder than anyone else and had the weight of a nation’s expectations on his shoulders. The mile for Landy was more aesthetic achievement than foot race. He said, ‘I’d rather lose a 3:58 mile than win one in 4:10.’ Landy ran night and day, across fields, through woods, up sand dunes, along the beach in knee-deep surf. Running revealed to him a self-discipline he never knew he possessed.

And finally there was Roger Bannister, the English medical student who epitomised the ideal of the amateur athlete in a world being overrun by professionals and the commercialisation of sport. For Bannister the four-minute mile was ‘a challenge of the human spirit’, but one to be realised with a calculated plan. It required scientific experiments, the wisdom of a man who knew great suffering, and a magnificent finishing kick.

All three runners endured thousands of hours of training to shape their bodies and minds. They ran more miles in a year than many of us walk in a lifetime. They spent a large part of their youths struggling for breath. They trained week after week to the point of collapse, all to shave off a second, maybe two, during a mile race – the time it takes to snap one’s fingers and register the sound. There were sleepless nights, training sessions in rain, sleet, snow, and scorching heat. There were times when they wanted to go out for a beer or a date yet knew they couldn’t. They understood that life was somehow different for them, that idle happiness would elude them. If they weren’t training or racing or gathering the will required for these, they were trying not to think about training and racing at all.

In 1953 and 1954, as Santee, Landy, and Bannister attacked the four-minute barrier, getting closer with every passing month, their stories were splashed across the front pages of newspapers around the world, alongside headlines of the Korean War, the atomic arms race, Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, and Edmund Hillary’s climb towards the world’s rooftop. Their performances outdrew golf majors, Ashes Tests, horse derbies, football and rugby matches, and baseball pennant races. Stanley Matthews, Ben Hogan, Rocky Marciano, Mike Hawthorn and Surrey County Cricket Club were often in the shadows of the three runners, whose achievements attracted media attention to athletics that has never been equalled. For weeks in advance of every race the headlines heralded an impending break in the barrier: ‘Landy Likely to Achieve Impossible!’; ‘Bannister Gets Chance of 4-Minute Mile!’; ‘Santee Admits Getting Closer to Phantom Mile’. Articles dissected track conditions and the latest weather forecasts. Millions around the world followed every attempt. Whenever any of the runners failed – and there were many failures – he was criticised for coming up short, for not having what it took. Each such episode only motivated the others to try harder.

They fought on, reluctant heroes whose ambition was fuelled by a desire to achieve the goal and to be the best. They had fame, undeniably, but of the three men only Santee enjoyed the publicity, and that proved to be more of a burden than an advantage. As for riches, financial reward was hardly a factor. They were all amateurs. They had to scrape around for pocket change, relying on their hosts at races for decent room and board. The prize for winning a meet was usually a watch or a small trophy. At that time, the dawn of television, when amateur sport was losing its innocence to the new spirit of win-at-any-cost, these three strove only for the sake of the attempt. The reward was in the effort.

After four soul-crushing laps around the track, one of the three finally breasted the tape in 3:59.4, but the race did not end there. The barrier was broken, and a media maelstrom descended on the victor, yet the ultimate question remained: who would be the best when they toed the starting line together?

The answer came in the perfect mile, a race no longer fought against the clock, rather against one another. It was won with a terrific burst around the final bend in front of an audience that spanned the globe.

If sport, as a chronicler of this battle once said, is a ‘tapestry of alternating triumph and tragedy’, then the first thread of this story begins with tragedy. It occurred in a race 120 yards short of a mile, at the Olympic 1,500m final in Helsinki, Finland, almost two years to the day before the greatest of triumphs.

I

A REASON TO RUN

1

I have now learned better than to have my races dictated by the public and the press, so I did not throw away a certain championship merely to amuse the crowd and be spectacular.

Jack Lovelock, 1,500m gold medallist, 1936 Olympics

On 16 July 1952 at Motspur Park, south London, two men were running around a black cinder track in singlets and shorts. The stands were empty, and only a scattering of people watched former Cambridge miler Ronnie Williams as he tried to stay even with Roger Bannister, who was tearing down the straight. It was inadequate to describe Bannister as simply ‘running’: eating up yards at a rate of seven per second, he was moving too fast to call it running. His pacesetter for the first half of the time trial, Chris Chataway, had been exhausted, and the only reason Williams hadn’t folded was that all he needed to do was maintain the pace for a lap and a half. What most distinguished Bannister was his stride. Daily Mail journalist Terry O’Connor tried to describe it: ‘Bannister had terrific grace, a terrific long stride, he seemed to ooze power. It was as if the Greeks had come back and brought to show you what the true Olympic runner was like.’

Bannister was tall – six foot one – and slender of limb. He had a chest like an engine block and long arms that moved like pistons. He flowed over the track, the very picture of economy of motion. Some said he could have walked a tightrope as easily, so balanced and even was his foot placement. There was no jarring shift of gears when he accelerated, as he did in the last stage of the three-quarter-mile time trial, only a quiet, even increase in tempo. Bannister loved that moment of acceleration at the end of a race, when he drew upon the strength of leg, lung, and will to surge ahead. Yes, Bannister ran, but it was so much more than that.

As he sped to the finish with Williams at his heels, Bannister’s friend Norris McWhirter prepared to take the time on the sidelines. He held his thumb firmly on the stopwatch button, knowing that because of the thumb’s fleshiness, having it poised only lightly added a tenth of a second at least. Bannister shot across the finish; McWhirter punched the button. When he read the time, he gasped.

Norris and his twin brother Ross had been close to Bannister since their days at Oxford University. They were three years older than the miler, having served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, but they had been Blues together in the university’s athletic club. Norris had always known there was something special about Roger. Once, during an Italian tour with the Achilles Club (the combined Oxford and Cambridge athletic club), which Bannister had dominated, McWhirter had looked over with amazement at his friend sleeping on the floor of a train heading to Florence and thought, ‘There lies the body that perhaps one day will prove itself to possess a known physical ability beyond that of any of the one billion other men on earth.’ Sure enough, as McWhirter stared down at his stopwatch that July afternoon, he could hardly believe the time: Bannister had run three-quarters of a mile in 2:52.9, four seconds faster than the world record held by the great Swedish miler Arne Andersson.

After gathering his breath, Bannister walked over to see what the stopwatch read. Cinders clung to his running spikes. At the time, athletics shoes were simply a couple of pieces of thin leather that moulded themselves so tightly to the feet when the laces were drawn that one could see the ridges of the toes. The soles were embedded with six or more half-inch-long steel spikes for traction. Running surfaces, too, had advanced very little over the years. They were mostly oval dirt strips layered on top with ash cinders that were taken from boilers at coal-fired electricity plants. Track quality depended on how well the cinders were maintained, since in the sun they became loose and tended to blow away, and when it rained the track turned to muck. Motspur Park’s track benefited from the country’s best groundskeeper, and it was one of the fastest, which was why Bannister had chosen it for this time trial.

He always ran a three-quarter-mile trial before a race to fix in his mind his fitness level and pace judgement. This trial was particularly important because in ten days’ time, given that he qualified in the heats, he would run the race he had dedicated the past two years to winning: the Olympic 1,500m final. A good time this afternoon was crucial for his confidence.

‘Two fifty-two nine,’ McWhirter said.

Bannister was taken aback. Williams and Chataway were just as incredulous. The time had to be wrong.

‘At least, Norris, you could have brought a watch we could rely on,’ Bannister said.

McWhirter was cross at such a suggestion. But he knew one way to make sure his stopwatch was accurate. He dashed to the telephone booth near the concrete stadium stands, put in a penny coin, and dialled the letters T-I-M. The phone rang dully before a disembodied voice came on to the line, tonelessly saying, ‘And on the third stroke, the time will be two thirty-two and ten seconds – bip–bip–bip – and on the third stroke, the time will be two thirty-two and twenty seconds – bip–bip–bip …’ Norris checked his stopwatch: it was accurate.

After McWhirter returned and confirmed the result to the others, they agreed that Bannister was certain of a very good show in Helsinki. They dared not predict a gold medal, but they knew that Bannister considered a three-minute three-quarter mile the measure of top racing shape. He was now seven seconds under this benchmark. All of his training for the last two years had been focused on reaching his peak at exactly this moment – and what a peak it was. He was in a class by himself. The critics – coaches and newspaper columnists – who had condemned him for following his own training schedule and not running in enough pre-Olympic races would soon be silenced.

There was, however, a complication, which McWhirter had yet to tell Bannister. As a journalist for the Star, McWhirter kept his ear to the ground for any breaking news, and he had recently heard something very troubling from British Olympic official Harold Abrahams. Because of the increased number of entrants, a semi-final had been added to the 1,500m contest. In Helsinki, Bannister would have to run not only a first-round heat, but also a semi-final before reaching the final.

The four men bundled into McWhirter’s black Humber and headed back to the city for the afternoon.

When Bannister was not racing around the track, where he looked invincible, the 23-year-old appeared slighter. In trousers and a shirt, his long corded muscles were no longer visible, and it was his face one noticed. His long cheekbones, fair complexion, and haphazard flop of straw-coloured hair across the forehead gave him an earnest expression that turned boyish when he smiled. However, there was quiet aggression in his eyes. They looked at you as if he was sizing you up.

As Norris McWhirter turned out of the park, he finally said, ‘Roger … they put in a semi-final.’

They all knew what he meant: three races in three days. Bannister had trained for two races, not three. Three required a significantly higher level of stamina; Bannister had concentrated on speed work. With two prior races, the nervous energy he relied on would be exhausted by the final – if he made the final. It was as if he were a marksman who had precisely calibrated the distance to his target, then found that his target had been moved out of range. Now it was too late to readjust the sights.

Bannister looked out the window, saying nothing. Away from Motspur Park with its trees and long stretches of open green fields, the roads were choked with exhaust fumes and bordered by drab houses and abandoned lots overgrown with weeds. The closer they got to London, the more they could see of the war’s destruction, the craters and bombed-out walls that had yet to be bulldozed and rebuilt. A fine layer of soot clouded the windows and greyed the rooftops.

The young miler didn’t complain to his friends, although they knew he was burdened by the fact that he was Britain’s great hope for the 1952 Olympics. He was to be the hero of a country in desperate need of a hero.

To pin the hopes of a nation on the singlet of one athlete seemed to invite disaster, but Britain at that time was desperate to win at something. So much had gone wrong for so long that many questioned their country’s standing in the world. Their very way of life had come to seem precarious. ‘It is gone,’ wrote James Morris of his country in the 1950s. ‘Empire, forelock, channel and all … the world has overtaken [us]. We are getting out of date, like incipient dodos. We have reached, none too soon, one of those immense shifts in the rhythm of a nation’s history which occur when the momentum of old success is running out at last.’ The First World War had put an end to Britain’s economic and military might. The depression of the 1930s slowly drained the country’s reserves, and its grasp on India started to slip. Britain moved reluctantly into the Second World War, knowing it couldn’t stand alone against Hitler’s armies. Once the British joined the fight, they had to throw everything into the effort to keep the Nazis from overrunning them. When the war was over they discovered, like the Blitz survivors who emerged onto the street after the sirens had died away, that they were alive, but that they had grim days ahead of them.

Grim days they were. Britain owed £3 billion, principally to the United States, and the sum was growing. Exports had dried up, in large part because half of the country’s merchant fleet had been sunk. Returning soldiers found rubble where their homes had once stood. Finding work was hard, finding a place to live harder. Shop windows remained boarded up. Smog from coal fires deadened the air. Trash littered the alleys. There were queues for even the most basic staples, and when one got to the front of the line, a ration card was required for bread (three and a half pounds per person per week), eggs (one per week), and everything else (which wasn’t much). Children needed ration books to buy their sweets. Trains were overcrowded, hours off schedule, and good luck finding a taxi. If this was victory, asked a journalist, why was it ‘we still bathed in water that wouldn’t come over your knees unless you flattened them?’

And the blows kept falling. The winter of 1946–7, the century’s worst, brought the country to a standstill. Blizzards and power outages ushered in what the Chancellor of the Exchequer called the ‘Annus Horrendus’. It was so cold that the hands of Big Ben iced up, as if time itself had stopped. Spring brought severe flooding, and summer witnessed extremely high temperatures. To add to the misery, there was a polio scare.

Throughout the next five years, ‘austerity’ remained the reality, despite numerous attempts to put the country back in order. Key industries were nationalised, and thousands of dreary prefabricated houses were built for the homeless. In 1951 the Festival of Britain was staged to brighten what critic Cyril Connolly deemed ‘the largest, saddest and dirtiest of the great cities, with its miles of unpainted half-inhabited houses, its chopless chop-houses, its beerless beer pubs … its crowds mooning around the stained green wicker of the cafeterias in their shabby raincoats, under a sky permanently dull and lowering like a metal dish-cover’. The festival, though a nice party, was an obvious attempt to gloss over people’s exhaustion after years of hardship. Those who were particularly bitter said that the festival’s soaring Skylon was ‘just like Britain’, standing there without support. To cap it all, on 6 February 1952 London newspapers rolled off the presses with black-bordered pages: the king was dead. Crowds wearing black armbands waited in lines miles long to see George VI lying in state in Westminster Abbey. As they entered the hall, only the sounds of footsteps and weeping were heard. A great age had passed.