The Perfect Mile taught me a lot about an event I thought I knew. The Englishman Roger Bannister was first to break four minutes for the mile, but there was a race (virtually) to do so.
John Landy, an Australian running in Finland, knocked 1.4 seconds (a huge chunk) off Bannister’s time six weeks later. See the whole progression here. The subtitle of the book is “Three Athletes, One goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It.” I’ve mentioned Bannister and Landy. The third athlete was Wes Santee, a Kansas collegian whose run-ins with the governing body of U.S. track-and-field left him suspended or withheld from various races of consequence just as he was reaching his peak, also in 1954. He ran a 4:01 and change, but never cracked the “magic” barrier.
The “perfect” mile of the title might have been the barrier-breaking turns around the track by Bannister on May 6, 1954, but the perfect race came later that summer, when Bannister and Landy faced off in the Empire Games, in Vancouver, British Columbia. This is back when the British were unabashedly an Empire, if fading. Now I believe this event, if held, is called the Commonwealth Games, and it’s not such a high point on the sporting calendar.
Bannister’s kick against Landy’s lead-from-the-front speed provided food for debate and intrigue, and the race played out in that fashion. Who won? Read for yourself. Both men broke four minutes. I knew nothing about this race before the book, but it was just as intriguing as the record-breaking efforts. Spoiler links: CBC archive isn’t working for me, but promises video of the event. NPR’s review has some multimedia, too.
Bannister continued to lead an incredible life, far beyond sport. I’m not sure where to look for someone of his breadth and caliber these days, though perhaps Johann Olav Koss might be said to be cut from the same cloth.