"But for most people, it's all they know me for and I can see why." So in that sense, the achievement is overrated," he said. "It's a small part of my life, and the importance of the things I've done are centred on medicine and neurology. This proud father of four - and grandfather of 14 - had once told me on the eve of his 80th birthday at his Oxford home that he never stopped feeling lucky to have been "the right man at the right time in the right race" but that he had also learned to appreciate its symbolic and long-lasting significance, even if it never did cease to amaze him. Perhaps that was because he understood instinctively, for all his modesty, that his tale would always retain the power to inspire. A good day, he would say, was when the subject didn't come up although he was always unfailingly polite in relating it. "Why should a boy know anything about an old man like me?" this self-effacing charmer would doubtless have shrugged.Īfter all, he never cared to look back even though for most of his 88 years of extraordinary achievement as ground-breaking neurologist, scholar, academic, drug-testing pioneer, sports administrator and athlete, he was implored to recount just those 3 minutes 59.4 seconds of it. Suddenly, we were reminded we were dealing in sporting pre-history here.īannister would have chuckled. "Who?" the 18-year-old's blank expression implied. Then down on the track, an Ethiopian boy Samuel Tefera won the 1500 metres, only to be asked afterward about Bannister. Wasn't everything simpler and more unsullied then, many wondered, even if that was probably all a great illusion. The applause after the screening in Birmingham was sustained and heartfelt, with an image long imprinted on a nation's consciousness given this fresh airing. "Three minutes, 59.4 seconds," the announcer, famously, had tried to tell the crowd but they only heard the word "three" before drowning him out. This, one of the greatest sports stories, had unfolded at a meet between Oxford University and Amateur Athletic Association. In Birmingham, England, on the final day of the World Indoor Championships - the same day it was announced that Bannister had succumbed to Parkinson's disease - organisers hastily arranged a screening of the grainy footage of that exhausted 25-year-old medical student, eyes closed and mouth agape, breaking the four-minute mile barrier at Oxford's Iffley Road track on the grey, golden evening of May 6, 1954. It was as though a younger generation agonising over cyclist Bradley Wiggins was simultaneously being introduced to a long-forgotten but still spotless national monument. "The last of the gentleman athletes" one newspaper story tagged him fondly alongside bigger banner headlines bemoaning a 21st century British sporting knight embroiled in a messy doping controversy. In Britain, the tributes to the runner who had arguably owned the fabled title of "GLE" - Greatest Living Englishman - were genuine, deep and affectionate, seeming to tell not so much of the passing of a legend as of an era. The world said a sad, sober farewell to Sir Roger Bannister on Sunday without overdone fuss and fanfare, just the way the great man would have liked it. The story of runner Roger Bannister, the 'Greatest Living Englishman' You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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