The Perfect Mile. Neal Bascomb

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      After four soul-crushing laps around the track, one of the three finally breasted the tape in 3:59.4, but the race did not end there. The barrier was broken, and a media maelstrom descended on the victor, yet the ultimate question remained: who would be the best when they toed the starting line together?

      The answer came in the perfect mile, a race no longer fought against the clock, rather against one another. It was won with a terrific burst around the final bend in front of an audience that spanned the globe.

      If sport, as a chronicler of this battle once said, is a ‘tapestry of alternating triumph and tragedy’, then the first thread of this story begins with tragedy. It occurred in a race 120 yards short of a mile, at the Olympic 1,500m final in Helsinki, Finland, almost two years to the day before the greatest of triumphs.

I

       A REASON TO RUN

1

       I have now learned better than to have my races dictated by the public and the press, so I did not throw away a certain championship merely to amuse the crowd and be spectacular.

       Jack Lovelock, 1,500m gold medallist, 1936 Olympics

      On 16 July 1952 at Motspur Park, south London, two men were running around a black cinder track in singlets and shorts. The stands were empty, and only a scattering of people watched former Cambridge miler Ronnie Williams as he tried to stay even with Roger Bannister, who was tearing down the straight. It was inadequate to describe Bannister as simply ‘running’: eating up yards at a rate of seven per second, he was moving too fast to call it running. His pacesetter for the first half of the time trial, Chris Chataway, had been exhausted, and the only reason Williams hadn’t folded was that all he needed to do was maintain the pace for a lap and a half. What most distinguished Bannister was his stride. Daily Mail journalist Terry O’Connor tried to describe it: ‘Bannister had terrific grace, a terrific long stride, he seemed to ooze power. It was as if the Greeks had come back and brought to show you what the true Olympic runner was like.’

      Bannister was tall – six foot one – and slender of limb. He had a chest like an engine block and long arms that moved like pistons. He flowed over the track, the very picture of economy of motion. Some said he could have walked a tightrope as easily, so balanced and even was his foot placement. There was no jarring shift of gears when he accelerated, as he did in the last stage of the three-quarter-mile time trial, only a quiet, even increase in tempo. Bannister loved that moment of acceleration at the end of a race, when he drew upon the strength of leg, lung, and will to surge ahead. Yes, Bannister ran, but it was so much more than that.

      As he sped to the finish with Williams at his heels, Bannister’s friend Norris McWhirter prepared to take the time on the sidelines. He held his thumb firmly on the stopwatch button, knowing that because of the thumb’s fleshiness, having it poised only lightly added a tenth of a second at least. Bannister shot across the finish; McWhirter punched the button. When he read the time, he gasped.

      Norris and his twin brother Ross had been close to Bannister since their days at Oxford University. They were three years older than the miler, having served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, but they had been Blues together in the university’s athletic club. Norris had always known there was something special about Roger. Once, during an Italian tour with the Achilles Club (the combined Oxford and Cambridge athletic club), which Bannister had dominated, McWhirter had looked over with amazement at his friend sleeping on the floor of a train heading to Florence and thought, ‘There lies the body that perhaps one day will prove itself to possess a known physical ability beyond that of any of the one billion other men on earth.’ Sure enough, as McWhirter stared down at his stopwatch that July afternoon, he could hardly believe the time: Bannister had run three-quarters of a mile in 2:52.9, four seconds faster than the world record held by the great Swedish miler Arne Andersson.

      After gathering his breath, Bannister walked over to see what the stopwatch read. Cinders clung to his running spikes. At the time, athletics shoes were simply a couple of pieces of thin leather that moulded themselves so tightly to the feet when the laces were drawn that one could see the ridges of the toes. The soles were embedded with six or more half-inch-long steel spikes for traction. Running surfaces, too, had advanced very little over the years. They were mostly oval dirt strips layered on top with ash cinders that were taken from boilers at coal-fired electricity plants. Track quality depended on how well the cinders were maintained, since in the sun they became loose and tended to blow away, and when it rained the track turned to muck. Motspur Park’s track benefited from the country’s best groundskeeper, and it was one of the fastest, which was why Bannister had chosen it for this time trial.

      He always ran a three-quarter-mile trial before a race to fix in his mind his fitness level and pace judgement. This trial was particularly important because in ten days’ time, given that he qualified in the heats, he would run the race he had dedicated the past two years to winning: the Olympic 1,500m final. A good time this afternoon was crucial for his confidence.

      ‘Two fifty-two nine,’ McWhirter said.

      Bannister was taken aback. Williams and Chataway were just as incredulous. The time had to be wrong.

      ‘At least, Norris, you could have brought a watch we could rely on,’ Bannister said.

      McWhirter was cross at such a suggestion. But he knew one way to make sure his stopwatch was accurate. He dashed to the telephone booth near the concrete stadium stands, put in a penny coin, and dialled the letters T-I-M. The phone rang dully before a disembodied voice came on to the line, tonelessly saying, ‘And on the third stroke, the time will be two thirty-two and ten seconds – bip–bip–bip – and on the third stroke, the time will be two thirty-two and twenty seconds – bip–bip–bip …’ Norris checked his stopwatch: it was accurate.

      After McWhirter returned and confirmed the result to the others, they agreed that Bannister was certain of a very good show in Helsinki. They dared not predict a gold medal, but they knew that Bannister considered a three-minute three-quarter mile the measure of top racing shape. He was now seven seconds under this benchmark. All of his training for the last two years had been focused on reaching his peak at exactly this moment – and what a peak it was. He was in a class by himself. The critics – coaches and newspaper columnists – who had condemned him for following his own training schedule and not running in enough pre-Olympic races would soon be silenced.

      There was, however, a complication, which McWhirter had yet to tell Bannister. As a journalist for the Star, McWhirter kept his ear to the ground for any breaking news, and he had recently heard something very troubling from British Olympic official Harold Abrahams. Because of the increased number of entrants, a semi-final had been added to the 1,500m contest. In Helsinki, Bannister would have to run not only a first-round heat, but also a semi-final before reaching the final.

      The four men bundled into McWhirter’s black Humber and headed back to the city for the afternoon.

      When Bannister was not racing around the track, where he looked invincible, the 23-year-old appeared slighter. In trousers and a shirt, his long corded muscles were no longer visible, and it was his face one noticed. His long cheekbones, fair complexion, and haphazard flop of straw-coloured hair across the forehead gave him an earnest expression that turned boyish when he smiled. However, there was quiet aggression in his eyes. They looked at you as if he was sizing you up.

      As Norris McWhirter turned out of the park, he finally СКАЧАТЬ