Sir Roger Bannister Was the first man to run a mile (1.609344 kilometers) below the 4 minutes. Until he did, most people believed that mark was impossible to break.
They believed that it was impossible for the human body to be faster and to collapse with pressure.
That was until they Bannister He proved that they were wrong. He trained his way, sometimes not as long as his competitors did, and believing he could do it.
Bannister came from a working class
He wanted to study medicine but knew that his parents could not afford to pay him for college.
When I was 10 years old I thought life would be very boring.
Decided to change things
He discovered that he had a talent for running and a lot of resistance when training. He decided to work hard and his work paid off: he won an athletic scholarship to attend the Oxford University .
While in college, the press reported on his talent. He refused to compete in 1948 Olympics Although seeing them inspired him to go to those of 1952. Expectations were high; Bannister hoped to win the 1500 meters and Britain in turn expected a lot from him.
It seems that at the last moment the race schedule was changed, which broke Bannister's rest routine and finished fourth.
He was so disgusted that he spent the next two months deciding whether to stop running.
In the end, he decided to prove himself and others that he could do better. In 1940 the record of running a mile was 4:01. Some doctors and scientists thought it was physically impossible to do it in less than 4 minutes.
Bannister began training 1.5 hours a day, doing intense speed exercises.
But Bannister was not the only one who was going to try. Many runners were training, including their Australian rival John Landy .
The Bannister Opportunity: May 6, 1954
Experts believed the record could only be broken on a windless day and about 20 degrees Celsius on a dry, hard clay track. The 6 of May of 1954 was not that day; It was cold and damp. The race was disputed in Iffley Road, Oxford .
Bannister had rested five days earlier because it would have energy both physically and psychologically. Although the conditions were bad, Bannister ran the race and won it with a time of 3:59, which was a new world record.
Bannister Beliefs
Later Bannister said that he believed that Landy had lost"heart"and that the barrier of the 4 minutes had become a barrier for him. Only 46 days later Landy broke the record again and the following years, more and more people broke the mark of the 4 minutes.
Once Bannister proved that it was possible to run under the 4 minutes, everyone was able to do it.
The man who can push when the effort becomes painful is the man who will win-Roger Bannister.