Four-minute Mile Research Articles

The Race of the Century: The Battle to Break the Four-Minute Mile by Neal Bascomb

Reviewed by: The Race of the Century: The Battle to Break the Four-Minute Mile by Neal Bascomb Elizabeth Bush Bascomb, Neal The Race of the Century: The Battle to Break the Four-Minute Mile. Scholastic Focus, 2022 [256p] illus. with photographs Trade ed. ISBN 9781338628463 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781338628494 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 5-8 Bascomb returns with another successful adaptation of material previously released for an adult audience, in this case his 2004 The Perfect Mile. Three middle distance runners—Britain’s Roger Bannister, Australia’s John Landy, and America’s Wes Santee—returned from the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki without medals but with a new goal: to break the four-minute mile, a feat many runners and scientists believed to beyond human capability. Bascomb delivers a balanced account of the men’s differences in personality, motivation, training regimens, and life responsibilities— they were, after all, amateurs with day jobs. There was also the ever-roiling media speculation that accompanied them ahead of the decisive Vancouver Empire Games of 1954, where Bannister edged out Landy (both breaking the four-minute goal), and Santee was left to cover the race from the commentator’s booth. The historical “Miracle Mile” is a thrilling tale in its own right, certain to enthrall middle school track runners and fans, but Bascomb also opens a window on the evolving status of amateur sportsmen, a preview of the financial and regulatory pressures on unpaid players who are expected to play like pros while funding their own training. An author’s note, bibliography, notes, and index are included. Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The Fastest Way Not to Run a Four-Minute Mile

SummaryIn this manuscript we present the mathematics that is needed to answer three counterintuitive problems related to the averaging of functions. The problems are manifestations of the question, “Is the average rate of change on a given interval determined by the average rate of change on subintervals of a fixed length?” We also ask questions in higher dimensions that may have interesting geometric significance.

Piano Virtuosos and the Four-Minute Mile

Abstract Roger Bannister ran a four-minute mile and the world was astonished. Now most national-class milers can do it. Concert pianists today are breathtakingly good. Their technique far surpasses the virtuosos of the past. What is the connection? Why are hard things becoming so much more commonly achieved? Howard Wainer explains.

Physicians, Scientists, Exercise and Athletics in Britain and America from the 1867 Boat Race to the Four-Minute Mile

Interest in studying the social, cultural, political and economic history of athletics and other physical activities has grown extensively during the last four decades and a growing number of academics have come to realize that there is much to be learned about the salience of ‘sport’ in human societies. With few exceptions it is only recently that historical studies of what now are referred to as ‘exercise science’ and ‘sports medicine’ have begun to appear. To better understand why – and how – these emerged and evolved it is important to attend to what Thomas Neville Bonner stated in his 1995 book Becoming a Physician: Medical Education in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, 1750–1945: look beyond ‘exclusively national terms’ and try to understand how ‘national differences’ have effected developments. It is no less important to give due attention to values that were an integral part of modern sports as these developed in different countries from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. In 1953, when Americans already had become quite interested and involved in the ‘scientific’ study of many parameters of athletic performance, Sir Stanley Rous would reiterate what Archibald Vivian Hill (co-recipient of the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine) had stated more than two decades earlier: ‘For a people to whom sport is a serious matter, the British go about their games in a surprisingly unserious way … [W]ho cares what effects [running] has on the chemical structure of a certain muscle.’ This article endeavours to shed much-needed light upon these and related matters.

Inhibiting Progress: The Record of the Four-Minute Mile

In this paper I explore the long-standing significance of the four-minute mile in line with the meaning it still holds today by discussing the concept of nostalgia. Further, I cite material from a series of in-depth interviews with six sub-four-minute milers. Every miler I spoke to remarked on how momentous and memorable running under four minutes was. And it is precisely how idealized sporting memories such as this form and the effect they have on contemporary standards that I intend to discuss. Effectively, this paper presents an embodied history of the four-minute mile and considers how and why this particular achievement has maintained its significance and the implications this holds for runners today.

Roger Bannister's American Image

Roger Bannister's image as the ultimate amateur athlete began to take shape in the US press well before his 3:59.4 mile at Iffley Road. In 1950s America, as the boundaries of amateur athletics became difficult to define and a climate of conformity prevailed, Bannister's image in the press developed in close juxtaposition with the image of Wes Santee, the American contender for the first four-minute mile. As recent American accounts of the four-minute mile expand their focus to include his fellow contenders, Bannister's US image is changing.

Amphetamine and the Four-Minute Mile

In June 1957 an American public health physician told his audience at a medical conference in New York that a stimulant drug such as amphetamine (‘Benzedrine’) might have enabled athletes to run the mile in less than four minutes, a feat first achieved in 1954 by Roger Bannister, who stated in 1957 that he had never heard of the use of stimulants by runners. The initial wave of denials and protests by athletes and sports officials was followed by a series of revelations about the use of such ‘pep pills’ by some elite athletes of this era. This short-lived controversy serves as an introduction to how the concept of doping developed during the 1950s. Ambivalence about the propriety of athletic doping at this time was exemplified by the provocative statements of the British sports physician Adolphe Abrahams, who combined concern about the medical effects of doping drugs with an open mind towards their use for the purpose of breaking records.

How Much of a Hero? The Fractured Image of Roger Bannister

Roger Bannister is widely regarded as one of Britain's greatest sporting heroes. However, his career included a number of controversies for which he was strongly criticized. Among such controversies was his unwillingness to disclose his training methods and the highly selective nature of the races in which he was prepared to compete. Several observers also criticized his involvement in the scientifically organized four-minute mile. In many ways Bannister can be read as being anything but an amateur as he often betrayed several traits of the ‘professional’.

Bannister's Feat in Austere Times: The Construction and Reproduction of a Sporting Trope

Roger Bannister himself, as well as cultural commentators and contemporaries reflecting upon the significance of the four-minute mile, have claimed that the achievement was welcomed by a British public ground down by the post-war years of austerity. The feat was also hailed as a statement of British quality, in rivalry with runners from the United States and Australia in particular. In this article, the context of austerity is explored, and local press responses to the Bannister record are evaluated, as a way of exploring the premises of these claims. The notion of the trope is employed to demonstrate how sporting actions and moments can be the vehicle for the expression and the perpetuation of social and cultural values that contribute to modern forms of myth-making.

The Idea of the Record

This paper examines the idea of the sports record and its relation to our ideas of excellence, achievement and progress. It begins by recovering and reviewing the work of Richard Mandell, whose definition of the record emphasizes three central ideas: statistic, athletic and recognition. It then considers the work of Henning Eichberg, Allen Guttmann and Mandell, from the 1970s onwards, on the genesis of the modern sports record, explaining and developing their ideas via a distinction between descriptive and emulative records, and between different kinds of emulative records. This then permits an analysis of contemporary athletic and sports records. The idea of the significant record will also be advanced, offering the four-minute mile as an example, in an attempt to explicate our continuing fascination with such exceptional achievements. It then considers the contribution of recent discussions of sport technologies and the logic of quantifiable progress, and tries to put our obsession with records in perspective as but one way in which we respond to and evaluate sporting performance.

Habitus, Barriers and the [Ab]use of the Science of Interval Training in the 1950s

Exploring the methods used by Franz Stampfl and Percy Wells Cerutty to help their athletes break the barrier of the first four-minute mile, this paper will attempt to unravel some of the myths surrounding the training of great athletes in the 1950s. The training of Stampfl has long been regarded as cold and scientific, whereas the methods of Cerutty relied upon a tacit knowledge of the body derived from the use of distinctive training philosophy – the creed of the ‘Stotan’. In effect the ‘battle’ between the two coaches was seen to be ideological. However, a close examination of the methods employed by both Stampfl and Cerutty highlights that they largely relied upon similar training methods which developed embodied habit, and it was simply where the training took place that was distinct.

Scientific and Romantic: The Rhetorics of the First Four-Minute Mile

Scientific and Romantic: The Rhetorics of the First Four-Minute Mile

Wes Santee, the Four-Minute Mile, and the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States

Wes Santee, the Four-Minute Mile, and the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States

At Last It Has Been Done

IT HAS LONG BEEN the ambition-expressed or implicit-of any number of great American writers (some of them, of course, all too unappreciated, and some of them employed-until such other appreciation finally does come-as teachers of English) to write the Great American Novel. Like the four-minute mile, the four-colour map problem, the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, or the perfect pinball game, such a grand aim has long served to motivate men and women so that, while falling short of the ultimate goal, they have, just incidentally, produced much other work of fine quality. The impossible dream serves to draw all onward to new heights. So it is with some regret that this announcement is issued: At Last It Has Been Done! Attached here is, in fact, the text of the Great American Novel: THE GREATEST AMERICANEST NOVEL.

Hypoxemia, Hypercapnia, and Cardiac Arrhythmias: The Importance of Regional Abnormalities of Vascular Distensibility

The detailed work reported in this issue by Rogers et al once again emphasizes the durable defense systems of the mammalian heart. Self-perpetuating and self-regulating mainspring of vertebrate life, the human heart is so well designed that normal man can withstand the weightlessness of outer space, the cold of the Antarctic continent, the oxygen demands of a four-minute mile, and the emotional stress of sudden pleasure or deep despair. And all of this with little change in myocardial oxygen tension.