The Perfect Mile. Neal Bascomb

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СКАЧАТЬ had attended, noticing that the sapling given to the Olympic gold medal winner had now grown into an oak tree. The symbolism wasn’t lost on him. Back in England Bannister continued his fellowship in medicine through the spring of 1951 at Oxford, where he investigated the limits of human endurance and chatted with such distinguished lecturers as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. He then flew to Philadelphia to compete in the Benjamin Franklin Mile, the premier American event in middle-distance running. The press fawned over this foil to the American athlete, commenting on his travelling alone to the event: ‘No manager, no trainer, no masseur, no friends! He’s nuts – or he’s good.’ In front of forty thousand American fans, Bannister crushed the country’s two best milers in a time of 4:08.3. The New York Herald Tribune described him as the ‘worthy successor to Jack Lovelock’. The New York Times quoted one track official as saying, ‘He’s young, strong and fast. There’s no telling what he can do.’

      The race brought Bannister acclaim back home. To beat the Americans on their own turf earned one the status of a national hero. When he followed with summer victories at the British Games and the AAA championships, it seemed track officials and the press were ready to award him the Olympic gold medal right then and there. They praised his training as ‘exceptional’, an ‘object lesson’. Of his long, fluid stride, the British press gushed that it was ‘immaculate’ and ‘amazing’. He left rivals standing; he was a ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ on the track. After a race that left the crowd laughing at how effortlessly Bannister had won, a British official predicted, ‘Anyone who beats him in the Olympics at Helsinki will have to fly.’

      Then the positive press turned quickly to the negative. Following his own plan, Bannister stopped running mile races at summer’s end. Tired from competition, he felt he had learned all he needed during the year and should now dedicate himself to training. When he chose to run the half-mile in an international meet, the papers attacked: ‘Go Back to Your Own Distance, Roger’. This was only the beginning of the criticism, but Bannister remained focused on his goal.

      To escape the attention, he journeyed to Scotland to hike and sleep under the stars for two weeks. One late afternoon, after swimming in a lake, he began to jog around to ease his chill. Soon enough he found himself running for the sheer exhilaration of it, across the moor and towards the coast. The sky was filled with crimson clouds, and as he ran, a light rain started to fall. With the sun still warming his back, a rainbow appeared in front of him, and he seemed to run towards it. Along the coast the rhythm of the water breaking against the rocks eased him, and he circled back to where he had begun. Cool, wet air filled his lungs. Running into the sun now, he had trouble seeing the ground underneath his feet, but still he rushed forward, alive with the movement. Finally spent as the sun disappeared from the horizon, he tumbled down a slight hill and rested on his back, his feet bleeding but feeling rejuvenated. He had needed to reconnect to the joy of running, away from the tyranny of the track.

      Throughout the winter of 1951–2, Bannister immersed himself into his first year of medical school at St Mary’s Hospital in London, learning the basics of taking a patient history and working the wards. He was, by the way, also training for the Olympics. By the spring he had developed his stamina and began speed work on the track. When he announced that he wouldn’t defend his British mile championship, the athletics community objected. It was unthinkable. He had obligations to amateur sport; he had to prove he deserved his Olympic spot; he must take a coach now; he couldn’t duck his British rivals. Bannister made no big press announcements defending his reasons, he simply stuck to his plan, trusting it. As isolating as this plan was, so far it had taken him exactly where he wanted – so far. Meanwhile, most other athletes trained under the guidance and direction of the British amateur athletics officials.

      On 28 May 1952, Bannister clocked a 1:53 half-mile at Motspur Park with his ‘space-eating stride’. Ten days later he entered the mile at the Inter-Hospitals Meet and won by 150 yards. Maybe he knew what he was doing. The press turned to writing that he would silence his critics at Helsinki and that his training was ‘well-advanced’. Compared to those of the top international 1,500m men, his times were sufficient. His ‘pulverizing last lap’ would likely win the day. Even L. A. Montague, the Manchester Guardian’s esteemed athletics correspondent, trotted out to explain that Bannister was the ‘more sensitive, often more intelligent, runner who burns himself up in giving of his best in a great race’. Bannister was Britain’s best chance at the gold medal, and Montague wondered, ‘Do [critics] really think that they suddenly know more about him than he knows himself?’

      Although he lost an 800m race at White City stadium in early July, the headlines exclaimed, ‘Don’t worry about Bannister’s defeat – he knows what he is doing!’ Ably assisted by the press, Bannister had painted himself into a corner. He was favoured to bring back gold by everyone from the head of the AAA to revered newspaper columnists – and, by association, by his countrymen as well. Of course, there weren’t going to be any scapegoats if he failed. ‘No alibis,’ as Bannister said himself. ‘Victory at Helsinki was the only way out.’ A part of him suspected that he had manoeuvred himself into this tight position on purpose. Come the Olympic final, he would have an expectant crowd, the rush of competition, two years of dedicated training, the expectation that it was his last race before retirement, and nobody to blame but himself if he lost. This was motivation.

      By 17 July most of the British Olympic team had left for Finland, team manager Jack Crump declaring upon arrival in Helsinki, ‘We will not let Britain down.’ But, though he would have to join the team soon, Bannister was still in London. Like a few other athletes, he wanted to avoid the media frenzy in the prelude to the Games, and the inevitable waiting around, worrying about upcoming events. His friend Chris Chataway, the 5,000m hopeful, had also delayed his departure. The two scoured London for dark goggles to curtain the twenty-one hours of Scandinavian daylight. Given that one rarely saw the sun in London, it proved a difficult search. Bannister also sought out a morning newspaper.

      It didn’t take him long to find a story headline – ‘Semi-Finals for the Olympic 1,500 Metres’ – that confirmed what Norris McWhirter had told him the day before about the added heat. ‘I could hardly believe it,’ Bannister later explained. ‘In just the length of time it took to read those few words the bottom had fallen out of my hopes.’ Worse, he had drawn a tough eliminating heat in the first round.

      As he went about his day in the smog-choked London streets, the crisp air and fast tracks he expected to enjoy in Helsinki seemed threateningly close at hand. One could hardly have blamed him had he not wanted to go at all.

2

       The essential thing in life is not so much conquering as fighting well.

      Baron de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games

      In the narrow concrete tunnel, Wes Santee stuck to his position in the seven-man line, waiting to move forward as the first of the American team marched into Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium through the Marathon Gate. The applause from the stands reverberated in the tunnel, sounding as if the whole of mankind had come to watch the opening ceremony parade. Santee, his feet more accustomed to cowboy boots or track spikes, stepped ahead in white patent leather shoes. His outfit was a departure from his typical attire of Western shirts and jeans. Like the rest of his team-mates, he wore a dark flannel jacket with silver buttons, grey flannel slacks, and a poplin hat whose brim he had folded to make it look more like a cowboy hat.

      The 20-year-old University of Kansas sophomore towered over most of those around him. At six foot one inch, with much of that height in his legs, he looked the clean-cut American athlete, buzz cut included. His shoulders were wide, and he bristled with energy. His face easily lit with a smile, and he almost always said what he thought, with a Midwestern twang. One had the sense that he wore his emotions out in the open, but that this vulnerability had a limit buttressed with steel.

      That СКАЧАТЬ