Roger Bannister breaks the 4-minute mile record on 6th May 1954.

By Don Hale donhaleblog.blogspot.com/2025 December 20, 2023

Roger Bannister breaks the 4-minute mile record on 6th May 1954.

https://donhaleblog.blogspot.com

www.welshmastersathletics.co.uk

Television Newsreel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg7TwEhNqI8

Roger Bannister's epic race when he smashed the record for the 4-minute mile:

Bannister's time was recorded as 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. On the morning of May 6, 1954, a Thursday, Roger Bannister, 25, a medical student in London, worked his usual shift at St. Mary’s Hospital and took an early afternoon train to Oxford. He had lunch with some old friends, then met a couple of his track teammates, Christopher Chataway and Chris Brasher. As members of an amateur all-star team, they were preparing to run against Oxford University. About 1,200 people showed up at Oxford’s unprepossessing Iffley Road track to watch, and though the day was blustery and damp — inauspicious conditions for a record-setting effort — a record is what they saw. Paced by Chataway and Brasher and powered by an explosive kick, his signature, Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes — 3:59.4, to be exact — becoming the first man ever to do so, breaking through a mystical barrier and creating a seminal moment in sports history. Roger Bannister later spoke about how he did it. You can listen to it on the BBC Sounds Replay podcast. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08bqk9k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg7TwEhNqI8

donhaleblog.blogspot.com/2025

Don Hale is a best-selling British author and former investigative journalist. He has been Journalist of the Year on three separate occasions in the past. and his extensive campaign to help free Stephen Downing for a murder he did not commit, won him both the Campaign and National Journalist of the Year Awards, A former regional newspaper editor, he was awarded an OBE in 2002 for campaign journalism. He has also been a lead investigator in several other successful, high-profile, miscarriage of justice and human rights cases. He has written several best selling books including - Murder in the Graveyard a true crime mystery story. There is also Buster Crabb - Ian Fleming's Favourite Spy, and Mallard about the battle to create the fastest steam loco in the world against the challenge from Nazi Germany, and more lately, there is The Jersey Boys and Liberation, about the secret stories of occupied Jersey during WW2, told by several resistance heroes and historians.