
“My only chance to win an Olympic title was over,” he said (pg. 1Īt the Helsinki games, Bannister came in fourth place by 0.6 seconds in the 1500 meters. In 1951, “It was a very quiet affair – an evening match between Chris Chataway’s club (Walton) and Imperial College…This was the first of many occasions when Chris Chataway helped me with the pacing in the early stages” (pg. This would help me to find out their special points, and if possible their weak spots” (pg. I worked out a plan…hoped to meet most of the opponents I was likely to race against in Helsinki. “It was Autumn 1950 and two years before the next Olympic Games in Helsinki. Lovelock told Bannister that “in every race there was a moment when the burst was least expected” (pg. 1 The tactic is to be paced as fast as sustainably possible until that moment of breaking away.īannister, in 1949 at Princeton, met Jack Lovelock who had set a world record for the mile in 1933. Hence he can accelerate suddenly and maintain his new speed to the finish” (pg. The ‘breaker’ is confident to the extent that he suddenly decides the speed is slower than he can himself sustain to the finish. 1īannister succinctly described the strategy of running the mile: “The decision to ‘break away’ results from a mixture of confidence and lack of it. His fame rests not in medicine, but rather as the first individual officially acknowledged to have run a mile in less than four minutes.īannister, in his 1955 book First Four Minutes, wrote, “I must try to steer a course between false modesty on the one hand and conceit on the other…It will be difficult to describe how moments when running seems utterly insignificant alternate with moments when it threatens to engulf me” (pg. Sir Roger Bannister is perhaps the most famous neurologist in history, yet few associate his name with neurology.



– Albert Hammond and John Bettis, “One Moment in Time” Statue of Roger Bannister (left) and John Landy (right) at moment Bannister took the lead in their race on August 7, 1954. “Between false modesty … and conceit” – Sir Roger Bannister January 10, 2022
