#374： The Race to Break the 4-Minute Mile
Episode Stats
Summary
Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile record in 1954, but the story behind this milestone of human performance often gets overlooked and is filled with drama and lessons on grit, determination, and living a balanced life. My guest today, Neil Bascom, wrote a book sharing the story of the three men racing to be the first to run a sub-4 minute mile, and shares insights from them on the way the ethos of sports changed as it transformed from amateur pursuit to professional job, and the ability of people to push the limits of the human body by sheer mental will.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now you may
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have heard of Roger Bannister and his amazing feat of breaking the four minute mile market
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back in 1954. But the story leading up to this milestone of human performance often
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gets overlooked and is filled with drama and lessons on grit, determination and living
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a balanced life. My guest today wrote a book sharing the story behind Bannister's record
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and the two other men who were also vying to break it. His name is Neil Bascom and his
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book is The Perfect Mile, Three Athletes, One Goal and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve
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It. We begin our discussion talking about the lead up to the race in which the four minute
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mile barrier was broken and how many doctors in the early 20th century believed achieving
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this milestone was physiologically impossible. Neil then tells us about the lies of the three
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men racing to be the first to run a sub four minute mile and shares insights from them
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on the way the ethos of sports changed as it transformed from amateur pursuit to professional
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job as well as the ability of people to push the limits of the human body by sheer mental
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will. Really great show. After the show is over, check out the show notes at a1.is slash
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perfect mile. Neil Bascom, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So you spent a lot
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of your career writing books about war, specifically World War II. In your book The Perfect Mile, you
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take a look at the epic race to break the four minute mile. I'm curious, what led you to write
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about this story? Was there some kind of World War II connection there or was it just an interest
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of yours that you had? No, actually Perfect Mile was the second book that I ever wrote that actually
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before I started writing about war. And my inspiration for it was basically from high school. I was a high
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school cross country runner. And my coach suggested to all his runners really not really a suggestion
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ordered us to read Bannister's memoir, the four minute mile Roger Bannister's memoir. And I was
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absolutely blown away by it. It's sort of gave me sort of added impetus to to run and to try to push
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myself. And, you know, later in, and as I started my writing career, I looked back to that story and
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saw that, that no one had really done a history of, of really the whole story about the breaking
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of the four minute mile, that it was more than just Roger Bannister story, but it was a story about
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three men all in their early twenties trying to achieve this landmark record.
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So before we get to these three men, let's talk about the backstory of this, of the four minute
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mile record. How long had people been trying to break a four minute mile before these three guys
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started doing it in Gusto in the 1950s? Well, it dates back quite a bit, actually. I mean,
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as early as 1770, a runner said that he had run the four minute mile down London's old street. There
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was no official record of that. And it's a very likely a myth, but probably in the, in the late 1800s,
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the mile and this sort of idea of, of achieving a four minute mile really came to four. There was
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what was called at that time, the mile of the century by two, two brothers who were competing
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with each other in, in West London. And they got the record down to four minutes and 18 seconds.
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And then as the 20th century hit, you find that the tracks are improving. Stopwatches are improving
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as well. And this idea of, of running four laps, four quarter miles in four minutes, the sort of
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perfect balance of that really captivated people. And runners began chipping away towards the four
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minute mile. So Pavo Nurmi, the Finnish runner, got it down to 410 in 1937. Sidney Wooderson got it
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down to 406. And then two Swedes in, in the sort of World War II years, knocked that down to, to
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basically four minutes in one second. And then that's where it stood. And people thought or believed in
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many ways that, that four minutes was an achievement that simply was impossible. Yeah. What did, I mean,
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you even had physiologists getting, you know, chiming in on this. What did they think would happen if
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a man did run a minute or run a mile under four minutes? Yeah. I mean, the, I'd say, you know,
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physiologists, probably the, the good ones would not go to the hyperbole that many went to, but my book
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opens up with the, the statement that men thought that people would die if they ever attempted to
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reach four minutes, that the heart, that the lungs simply didn't have the capacity for it.
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And so there was this barrier, both sort of, I think physiologically, but probably more
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psychologically that it was an impossible achievement. So why, why is the four minute mile such a hard
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feet? I mean, what makes it different from say, you know, an 800 meter sprint or a 5k?
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Well, I think the mile and milers say this, but I think, you know, track coaches and, and many people
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who are sort of intimately involved in, in the sort of running world, consider the mile, the kind of
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perfect combination, perfect balance between speed and endurance. You'd need both of those to become an
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expert miler. So if you're a marathoner, endurance is, is, is, is what you need for most. If you're a
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sprinter doing a hundred yard dash, speed is what you need most. But if you're going to run a mile
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under four minutes, you need to both be able to sustain incredible amounts of speed over a fair
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amount of distance. If you ever try, in fact, to come close to what a four minute mile is, I would
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suggest running on a treadmill and, and knocking it down the speed until you're as fast as you can
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go. And that's probably about a five minute mile and your legs are just going like crazy. So you can
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imagine what improving that speed by 20, 25% is about. And how are people training for this before
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these three characters you follow in the book started really gunning for it? Were they scientific
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about it or were they just like, just run as hard as I can until I can't anymore? Yeah. I mean,
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the, the training at this time was not particularly advanced. I think the, the big training movement
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that, that really sort of ramped up speed subsequent to these events are two a day training sessions at
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this point in time, you know, people weren't using coaches really that much. They were running once a
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day. They were doing limited intervals and they were basically in, in some respects, just running long
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distances and hoping that that would improve their times. There was a runner named Emil Zadipak, who
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at this period of time was, was beginning to sort of train in a more modern way, but, you know,
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Bannister and these others who were racing to break the four minute mile, when they started, they were
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really training under sort of rudimentary methods at best. Right. And what I also love about this book,
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besides telling the story of these three characters is how you describe what sport was like during this
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time in the early part of the 20th century, particularly running. How was it different
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than from what it is today? Well, I think the fundamental difference is this idea of the amateur
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athlete, the ethos of that, the idea that, you know, at this time that again, coaches were, were
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scorned, uh, running and, and competition and athletics was about fun and about the effortlessness
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of it. Uh, there's this, there's this anecdote, which I love particularly. There was an Oxford sprinter,
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a guy named Bevel Rudd. And just to give you an idea of, of what people considered an athlete
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should be or how they should approach their sport. Uh, he was a sprinter. He arrived at the quarter
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mile race with a cigar chomping in his mouth. He put it down on the side of the track. He ran his
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sprint. He won. He picked up the still smoking cigar, stuck it back in his mouth and sauntered away from
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the track. That is an extreme example of what, you know, the sort of amateur effortless athletic runner
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was about, but it gives you an idea of the world that these people were living in at the time.
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So it wasn't like today where like you have athletes who dedicate 24 seven to training for their,
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their sport. Like they, they, the amateur athletes strive to have a well-balanced life and sport was
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just one of many things they did. Yeah. Sport was one of many things. It was not a career. It was not
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something that they endeavored to make money off of. They thought that they would run in their early
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twenties and then they would go off and pursue a career. Often they were studying at the same time
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and there just was no expectation. Then this was more than just a sort of intense hobby.
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And this was particularly a British ethos, correct? Like a United Kingdom?
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Yeah. I mean, I, I would say this, the, the, the British exemplified this the best. I think the
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Americans in sort of typical American fashion were exceeding and, and sort of professionalizing
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what running in athletics was, but even in the United States and one of the principal characters
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in the story, Wes Santee was bedeviled by this, I think evolving world between amateur athletics and
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what sport was to become, which was professional athletics. And it was one of the reasons, again,
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I wrote this book. I just felt it was this particularly nice moment in sport where the sort
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of last of the great amateur athletes achieves a sort of landmark record. I think subsequent to that,
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And also it was interesting. This is going on all the race for the four minute mile or the sub four
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minute mile was going on at the same time when this other sort of amateur idea of the,
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the amateur adventurer. So you had people trying to scale Mount Everest and doing all these other
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epic things. It was kind of that, it was catching that same sort of vein and it was sort of the last
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Yeah, it was, it was this idea. I mean, Edmund Hillary, um, who was in the, uh, I hate to use this
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word, but I will, uh, the milieu of, uh, of Roger Bannister and these others, these, these men who
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consider themselves adventurers, explorers, pushing both sort of not only the personal records, but,
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So let's talk about these characters specifically. We, everyone probably knows Roger Bannister.
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So we'll save him for last. Let's talk about, you mentioned Wes Santee. There were three individuals.
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Wes Santee was one of them. He was an American, but tell us more about his, his background and
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how he approached breaking the, the sub four minute mile.
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So Wes Santee was, was the American, one of the three in the story all trying to, uh, achieve the,
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the four minute mile at the same time. He was, you know, from a small town, uh, Kansas farm,
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an awful guy who beat Wes pretty terribly. Whenever he tried to sort of perform his sport growing up,
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his father wanted him to work the farm. He didn't want him to be interested in athletics or anything like
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that didn't want him to run. Uh, and running for Wes Santee was his way out of that world away from the
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farm. He was recruited to the university of Kansas by the great track coach there, Bill Easton,
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and became very quickly, um, the greatest miler in America by, by great strides. And Wes was quite a
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bit of a character. He was, he was very brash. He loved the, loved the glamour, loved the press.
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He was considered the quote unquote, dizzy Dean of the cinders. He would approach the track. He would
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say, I'm going to run this time, like Babe Ruth kind of pointing to the stands where he's going to
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hit the home run. And then he'd run that exact time. And he was competing both, uh, off for the
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university and then also trying to, to achieve the Olympics in, in 1952. And I think one of the
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sort of foundations of the story is that all three of these individuals competing for this, uh, Roger
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Bannister, Wes Santee, and then John Landy all had approached the 52 Helsinki Olympics, hoping and
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believing that they would, would win or, or at least place in the medal. And none of them did. And so
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by the end of that Olympics, they were rearing to go to try to sort of prove themselves. And the mile
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was the way that they were going to do that. Breaking the four minute mile was, was in some
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ways redemption for all three of these runners. And for Wes, uh, who was still competing for the
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university of Kansas and was running races almost on a weekly basis, not only running the mile, but
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even longer distances, he was just sort of constantly, constantly running, running, running, running
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and competing, competing. And he was as though he was shooting for the four minute mile, he also had
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the responsibilities of so many other things. And that's in, in sort of very stark contrast to the
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two other runners, uh, Bannister and Landy who were much more focused on simply breaking the four
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minute mile. That was their ambition. That was the focus of all their efforts. And so in some ways,
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Santee was, was handicapped by the sort of constant running and constant racing as opposed to the two
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others. So you mentioned earlier that Santee was sort of bedeviled by this transition from sort of
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amateur athletics to the professionalization of the sport. I mean, how did, how did that play out
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in his life and in his running career? Any examples of that? It, you know, it did not play out well for,
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for Wes Santee. I mean, Wes was, and I met and interviewed all, all three of these gentlemen,
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um, over the course of, of, of writing the book. And, you know, even in his, in his seventies,
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Wes was still sort of heartbroken over what happened to him in this period of time. Basically,
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uh, amateur athletics in the United States, a lot of people were making money except for
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the athletes themselves. You sort of almost can, can, uh, sort of draw a line to what's happening
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and in college athletics, college football and the like, where you have this world in many ways,
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exploiting these athletes. And Wes, who was, was not a shy individual pushed up against that and was
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offered, you know, travel money basically, uh, to go to different events across the country.
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And because he was so brash, because he was so in your face, I think the athletic community in the U.S.
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was, was intimidated or afraid, or in some ways, uh, wanted to sort of knock him down off that,
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that stool. And they essentially did that over the course of the 1954 and ultimately ended up banning
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him from, from racing right at the sort of crux or the most important moments of breaking a four
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minute mile where he didn't end up getting his chance. And the, the, the organization you're
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talking about here's the AAU, correct? Correct. Correct. So you mentioned earlier,
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I'm somewhat guessing Santee never broke the four minute mile, correct? So Santee never broke the
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four minute mile. He came within 30 seconds of it, but that was as close as he ever got.
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And I think a combination of overrunning, overcompeting, uh, coupled with, uh, the AAU,
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uh, controversy, which eventually, uh, forced him out of the sport, uh, kept them from achieving it.
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And what did he do after his running career was over?
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He, after his running career, he ended up selling insurance across Kansas and then, you know, made a
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career that raised a family. But again, when I met him in Kansas in 2002, I believe, I mean,
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he still talked very emotional about his father. In some ways he was, he was still a bit of an open
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wound about what happened to him about the four minute mile and the AAU expulsion.
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So let's, let's move over to John Landy. He was an Australian runner. How, how did being a runner
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from us, Australia disadvantage him? And, or maybe how did it, that disadvantage perhaps give him an edge
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as well? Well, I think that the disadvantage for Landy, at least in Australia was the sort of
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lack of focus on, on running the running culture there, uh, growing up running and, and competing
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in athletics was not necessarily something that a young Melbourne boy would aspire to be. Landy came
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from a sort of middle-class background, nice family. He loved to chase butterflies. He came to running
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late in his life or late in his, you know, teens and, but found that he had this sort of amazing,
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uh, at this period ability to sort of push himself to, to compete out of almost sheer will.
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And he was eventually recruited to join a sort of band of merry runners as I sort of look at it,
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led by this kind of guru, I guess is the best way of explaining him, or he was a bit of a freak,
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but he knew running very well, a man named Percy, uh, Saruti. And he was, he was a short guy. He's
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about five foot two Saruti. And he ran barefoot. He ran around town in Melbourne, uh, shirtless wearing
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these very small, um, shorts and recruited Landy and a bunch of other runners to, to train them to be
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the best. And he had these sort of outlandish methods. Not only was running barefoot sort of
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part of that, but running up and down sand dunes, running through, through nature,
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living off a vegetarian root based diet, considered running kind of, uh, it's the best way of saying
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it is sort of as an art as expression of art. And Landy thrived under that for, for a while because
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it, it, uh, it was fun and it was something where he found himself on a team and, and was sort of
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pushing and getting better and better. But ultimately Saruti did not believe that, that will,
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where running more and more was, was the way to achieve and to get better. And Landy at a certain
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point decided that he could train himself and he could push himself harder and longer than anybody
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else. And so you have Landy, I think of all three runners, probably the one who trained the most,
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who trained the hardest was running, you know, hours and hours at night, uh, after school and really
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ground himself down and pushed himself. And probably I'd say was the best conditioned, uh, runner of,
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of the three of these challengers to the four minute mile. Yeah. When I was reading about Landy's
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coach, it reminded me of sort of like kind of the paleo movement that you see today, right?
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Yes. I mean, and imagine that in, in, in, in 1954, right? So that was, that was not de rigueur.
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And so you mentioned Landy after he broke, he, he got more intense with his training. Did his
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style of running change after he broke that broke from this coach that allowed him to, you know,
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give him an edge in his, in his running? No, I wouldn't say his, his style of running changed
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dramatically. I mean, his, his stride changed a little bit. He, you know, the, the barefoot
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running, uh, helped augment that, but it was for, for Landy, it was really about putting in the miles
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about keeping a notebook and, and writing, you know, okay, today I went eight miles in the morning.
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I went, I did this speed tomorrow. I'm going to do nine miles. And then just ramping that up
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all on his own without any, without any great interval training or sort of scientific methods
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about it, just sheer putting on the miles to, to improve. And, you know, it, it did wonders. He
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became the, the, the greatest Australian miler, uh, at the time and steadily chipped down at the
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four minute mile and got very close to being the first person to break it.
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And he also, you mentioned that he, while he didn't have a coach, he did look at how some of the
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other runners were training. I guess he took a lot of inspiration from those Finnish guys, right?
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He did from, particularly from Zatapak, who we met at Helsinki Olympics and took away some of those
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interval training methods. But, but again, all sort of notes, no, no kind of rigorous schedule
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that we have today where you, you know, you're going to do, you know, two minutes,
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hard bursts and then 15 seconds off and, and, and at this heart rate and at this level of effort,
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it was just, he was experimenting by, by feel more than anything else.
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So let's move to Bannister. So he was from England. What was his philosophy towards running
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Yeah. I mean, Bannister was, was the archetypal, um, amateur athlete. He was conservative guy.
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He was quiet. He was cerebral. He was born in Harrow, England. Um, loved running from a sort of very
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early age. I think one of his sort of crystalline memories is, is running on a beach as a child and
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that sort of freedom of movement. And he writes beautifully about that in his memoir about running,
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but I think above and beyond anything else, uh, a love of running, I think what you had in Bannister
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was just an absolute killer in terms of competitive will. Um, I mean, meeting him, uh, years ago,
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you know, the intensity of his eyes, the intensity with which he spoke of these races, you know,
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almost 50 years later was absolutely remarkable. Um, and so Bannister is the, is the amateur athlete,
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you know, although he wanted to be the best, um, he also wanted to, um, pursue his, his career.
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And so at this time of the training, he was, he was, um, training to break the four minute mile. He was,
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um, studying to become a doctor. He was interning at St. Mary's hospital. Um, he attended Oxford.
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So he was, you know, achieving this sort of excellence, um, in medicine to become a neurologist,
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uh, while at the same time trying to break this, um, this record. And so he had very little time to
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do that. He was training, um, you know, at lunchtime, uh, at best a half hour, uh, walking to the track
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near the hospital and, and putting in his time and then going back and, and seeing patients. Uh, he was
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again, the sort of the supreme example of the amateur athlete, at least at the beginning of,
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of, of this story that subsequently sort of evolved as he got closer and closer to four minutes.
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Yeah. So you mentioned Landy, his training was sort of experimentation, trial and error,
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but Bannister with his medical background, he, he kind of got scientific with how to best approach
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breaking the four minute mile. And he kind of, he researched it. Like he had this, he had,
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I guess he developed this contraption to touch, to test a VO two max, correct?
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Yeah. He was testing a VO two max. Uh, he was testing a lactate act, lactate acid in his,
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his muscles. He had built this treadmill and in the lab, uh, at school and, you know, he would put
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himself on that thing and hook himself up and run as fast as he could and then hop off and take,
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you know, blood samples and then do it again. Um, and really trying to see from a scientific level,
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what was possible, what was physiologically possible and how to sort of push himself,
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um, to a higher level. He experimented on his friends, uh, Chris Brasher and Chris Jadaway,
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um, and other people, uh, he was running a sort of scientific experiment in some ways on,
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on the four minute mile. And I think for a period of time that overwhelmed him, um, in the sense that
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he was approaching this from a purely sort of mental level. Um, and I think again, as the story
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evolved, he had to sort of embrace that sort of love of running, which I think Santee probably
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exemplified more than anybody else. Um, and that sort of will that John Landy sort of exemplified
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probably more than anybody else. Bannister in many ways need to sort of combine those
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sort of will love running and the, and the sort of mental, um, uh, breakdown of what was absolutely
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necessary to break four minutes. And what's also interesting about Bannister. So he started off
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like Landy. Well, no, he started off training by himself, but unlike Landy who later, you know,
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he started off with the coach, but then broke off by himself. Bannister, as he got closer and closer
00:26:24.620
to breaking the four minute mile, he actually got a coach and started working with other people to
00:26:29.440
help them do this thing. He realized he couldn't do it by himself. Yeah. I mean, I think that's
00:26:33.180
probably, that was the, the significant moment for, for Bannister. So you have 1952, the Helsinki
00:26:40.920
Olympics, the, the, the failure there, uh, Bannister particularly was slated to, to, to win a medal.
00:26:48.680
Um, and so he comes back and all through 1953, he's, he's running on his own and getting slightly
00:26:58.400
better, but not to the level that he needs to. And so finally he, his friends, uh, Chris Chatterwing,
00:27:08.040
Chris Brasher and a coach, uh, Franz Stomfel, um, who again was beginning to sort of pursue running
00:27:19.800
in a much more sort of rigorous, um, new methods, new interval training and the like, um, and really
00:27:27.620
getting Bannister to sort of push himself, um, past the point where he thought he would break.
00:27:33.680
I think that was what Stomfel did as a coach for Bannister. Um, I think Bannister wasn't willing
00:27:41.520
to sort of push himself to that point. And, and, and Stomfel was the one who, who got him there.
00:27:47.300
So let's talk about the race in which Bannister finally beat the four minute mile. When did that
00:27:53.380
happen? And did he like, was he expected to do that? He thought he was going to do it that day
00:27:57.400
or were there, was there sort of some hemming and hawing before then?
00:27:59.740
Well, I think in, I think it was a little bit of both. I mean, Bannister, again, unlike Santee was
00:28:05.880
racing time and time again to break four minutes. Bannister took a much more measured approach to it
00:28:10.980
and decided that if he was going to achieve this, he would have to pick a date, pick a time where he
00:28:18.060
was at the absolute supreme level of his conditioning. And also to do that race with pacers,
00:28:27.620
with people, again, his friends, Chad away and Brasher, who were both runners to
00:28:33.760
in some ways, uh, push him along the track as, as pacers to, to bring him to the level where he,
00:28:42.640
he could push past four minutes. Um, and to say that better, he took Bannister took this as a,
00:28:50.800
as a team approach. He knew he couldn't do it alone on the track by himself. He needed someone
00:28:56.520
to chase after, um, and to push himself. And so he organized this, um, this race on May 6th,
00:29:02.960
1954. It definitely rode track at Oxford, a track that he knew very well. And his two pacers would go
00:29:11.120
out before him and he would follow them around and then ultimately leave them behind to break four
00:29:16.980
minutes. And it's funny, you said that you kind of mentioned this in the book that, uh, the fact that
00:29:22.100
he used pacers, put a metaphorical asterisk next to his achievement.
00:29:27.200
No, I, I definitely think it, it did in some ways. I mean, at least in many people's eyes,
00:29:33.660
the, uh, the fact that he did not compete in a race and do it, that he had people pushing and,
00:29:41.160
and in some ways he was drafting off of them around the track did not make it legitimate.
00:29:45.820
My point of view on that is that's bullocks and, you know, he ran four minutes. No one had ever
00:29:52.300
done it. He did it on the track. He didn't have some sort of special shoes or extreme gusty wind,
00:29:58.000
uh, at his back on a, on a straight, he ran it around a track on a sort of dim, dark day and,
00:30:04.140
and, and managed it and achieved something that was remarkable. But I don't think that was the end
00:30:08.560
of the story. Um, the reason that my book is called the perfect miles, because I don't consider
00:30:14.520
the breaking of the four minute mile at Iffley road on May 6th to be Bannister's ultimate achievement.
00:30:20.240
I think it was beating four minutes at a race, uh, against the best in the world,
00:30:27.920
which he did subsequent to that. Right. So the best in the world was John Landy, who,
00:30:31.860
who broke the four minute mile after Bannister. How long after Bannister broke the four minute mile,
00:30:36.580
did Landy break it? Landy broke it on June 21st, 1954. So, you know, roughly six,
00:30:43.960
six and a half weeks after Bannister did it. And it was, it's interesting because Landy,
00:30:49.460
who had come the closest prior to, to Bannister had essentially given up in some ways. I mean,
00:30:56.440
he had told the press that he felt like he had hit a brick wall, that there was no faster that he could
00:31:01.960
go. And yet after Bannister broke it, I think, I think in many ways, the psychological barrier was
00:31:09.100
broken and Landy and in Finland at a race, not only broke four minutes, uh, but beat Bannister's time
00:31:18.920
by almost a minute and a half. I mean, almost a second and a half, which is remarkable.
00:31:25.520
All right. So Landy breaks it. Santee is sort of out cause he didn't, he has to join the Marines
00:31:31.340
and that kind of ended his career. You've talked about this, the perfect mile, this race,
00:31:35.440
this showdown between Bannister and Landy, uh, how big of a, of a cultural event was this
00:31:41.120
at the time? Did it sort of captivate world audiences? So the four minute mile itself,
00:31:45.900
the, this race, um, that Bannister sort of started off by announcing that, that he was going to break
00:31:51.760
four minutes and this battle between he and Bannister and I mean, battle between Bannister,
00:31:58.400
Landy and Santee captivated the world and brought a tremendous amount of front page news attention to
00:32:03.480
this, not only to the mile, but to athletics. And so once Bannister broke it again, worldwide headline
00:32:10.560
news. And then suddenly in August of 1954, you have Bannister and Landy, the two men in the world
00:32:18.240
who had broken four minutes now facing off against each other in a race. And so that just drew the
00:32:26.040
attention of, of sports writers and newspapers and radio broadcasters and, and the like, it was,
00:32:33.760
um, an international event that drew a tremendous amount of attention. And in some ways, as, as again,
00:32:40.000
as I write in the book is, is, is that was sort of the beginning of this evolution from, from amateur to,
00:32:47.680
to professional athletics, this idea, this level of attention, uh, this media presence of the Commonwealth
00:32:57.480
games, um, for this epic race in August, uh, in Vancouver, uh, between Bannister and Landy.
00:33:04.960
And going into the race, who was favored to win it? Was it Landy because he had won, you know,
00:33:10.120
he broke the four minute while, while actually racing or was Bannister favored?
00:33:14.300
I think that largely depends on, uh, what newspapers you were reading. If you were reading
00:33:18.460
the London press, um, they, they were sure Bannister was going to win. And if you were reading the,
00:33:23.860
the, the Melbourne press, that the, the alternate would be the case. But from my perspective,
00:33:31.480
at least Landy was the, the faster runner. He was suffering a little bit from a cold, um,
00:33:38.100
in Vancouver, but he was, you know, he had been competing, um, over the course of, of, of this
00:33:47.160
story. So he had more sort of, um, experience in some ways on that level. He was clearly in better
00:33:54.940
shape and in many ways, I thought a faster runner. So if, if I could sort of draw back in time and look
00:34:03.860
at this without knowing what was going to happen, I probably would have bet on Landy. Um, he was the
00:34:08.960
kind of runner who always sort of went off, um, like a jackrabbit from the start and kept and
00:34:15.520
maintained the lead, uh, throughout the race. That was the kind of runner he was. And he just ran away
00:34:20.700
with race after race. And so compared to Bannister, who in some ways, you know, was still not training
00:34:30.640
at the level anywhere near what Landy was doing, um, and had been beaten by a second and a half
00:34:38.080
in terms of time. And so that was, that's pretty dramatic difference. And what made the race more
00:34:44.180
dramatic too, and people didn't, people at the time didn't know this, that Landy before the race stepped
00:34:48.640
on some flash bulb from a photographer and sliced his foot open before the race.
00:34:53.140
Yeah. I mean, he had, you know, had a cold and had this, uh, this injury on his foot, but,
00:34:58.780
you know, speaking to Landy about it, and maybe he was just being a gentleman, uh, many years later,
00:35:04.640
he said, you know, that, that had no significant impact, um, at all on his, uh, running that day.
00:35:12.260
And I think that's probably the case. I think pure adrenaline would have, uh, would have obviated
00:35:17.780
that injury. Although it was, you know, in some ways serious. I mean, his foot was sort of blood
00:35:22.800
soaked at the end of the race. So what allowed Bannister to win? Do you think he just dug deep
00:35:26.880
and just tapped into that will, that competitive killer instinct to win in that final kick?
00:35:32.300
I think it, it absolutely was about Bannister and his killer instincts. I mean, it's drew back to what
00:35:38.280
I said earlier about him. He was a killer. I mean, he was a competitive monster. He needed to win.
00:35:45.860
He had to win. And he was, he was very smart about it. He let Landy, you know, lead off. He let Landy
00:35:53.240
sort of in some ways expire himself a little bit. And then out of sort of sheer will and killer instinct,
00:36:00.440
he sort of drew himself closer and closer to Landy as they went, um, into the, to the final stretch of
00:36:06.920
the race. And I think so sort of most famously, and there's even a statue of this and in Vancouver
00:36:12.920
Van or Landy looked over his shoulder to see where Bannister was knowing very well that he was coming
00:36:19.180
up close on his heels. And that split second of, of turning and that loss of momentum in his legs
00:36:26.800
was the exact moment that Bannister put on his final kick. And it was more than enough to not only
00:36:33.300
beat Landy, but also to, to break the four minute mile again.
00:36:36.860
So what did Landy and Bannister do after this, this perfect race? How did they spend the rest of
00:36:41.940
their careers? So, so Bannister largely abandoned, uh, running subsequent to, to the empire of games.
00:36:49.360
He retired. He went on to become what he always wanted to be a neurologist, a quite successful one
00:36:56.280
and was, was, was practicing medicine, you know, for, for decades afterwards and was a fairly well
00:37:03.160
renowned neurologist. Uh, Landy actually ran in the subsequent Olympics, uh, did not do terribly well,
00:37:11.240
but his probably sort of most famous incident after, uh, this four minute mile episode was when he,
00:37:18.320
uh, at the Olympics sort of stopped to, to rescue or to help another runner on the track and then went
00:37:24.140
on to win the race, uh, even after the delay of helping another runner get up and back to his
00:37:29.140
feet. So Landy was very much a beloved figure in, in Australia. Uh, he became a businessman and then
00:37:35.640
when he retired, he eventually ended up becoming the governor of Victoria, a sort of ceremonial post
00:37:41.080
kind of a sort of head of state of that particular area of Australia.
00:37:46.320
So, yeah, it sounds like a lot of these, they kind of moved on with their life. It sounds like.
00:37:50.180
Yeah. I mean, I think the only one who didn't move on with his life was, was Wes Santee. When I
00:37:55.280
met him, he was at that time serving as kind of a, his best way to put it is, uh, a condolence, uh,
00:38:03.540
mourner at, at a funeral parlor, which is a sort of sad place to sort of spend your days. But again,
00:38:10.720
he, you know, constantly spoke of, of what happened in the four minute mile with a great deal of regret.
00:38:17.000
So what's the record for the mile now and what's the threshold that everyone's gunning for now?
00:38:24.320
So the record for the, for the mile now is, is three minutes, 43 seconds and, and some change,
00:38:31.460
I think owned by a Moroccan, uh, El Garouche. And he's held that record since 1999. So, so no one's sort
00:38:40.720
of chipped away at it since then. And I think in some ways the mile isn't quite what it used to be,
00:38:46.940
I think the metric system is sort of taken dominance in the 1500 meter race, which is the
00:38:55.400
Olympic race, uh, is really what middle distance runners are, are running now and, and aiming to
00:39:01.180
achieve. And so the mile is sort of lacked, uh, lost some of the glamour that it, that it had in
00:39:06.920
those days, uh, in 1954. Are there people still gunning for it though? Like there are people like,
00:39:11.840
I'm a miler. That's what they say they are. Yes. I mean, I think in, in particularly in America,
00:39:18.100
probably there are, there are more, there's more of this idea of, of being a miler and, and sort of
00:39:23.460
breaking four minutes, which in some ways is now the sort of standard to become a competitive miler is
00:39:31.180
to actually break four minutes, but to actually chip it down to three 40 or three 30, no one's come
00:39:37.060
close. I think most of the attention right now is, is on running at least in at least breaking
00:39:42.620
barriers is that two hour marathon. So after writing about these three men, did you take away
00:39:47.900
any lessons from them on living a, a good life? And do you think they should serve as models for
00:39:53.340
athletes today? I think it's probably impossible for this idea of, of, you know, the most elite
00:40:03.260
athletes in the world to be pure, pure amateurs. I think that day is lost, but I think at least from,
00:40:11.840
from my perspective, from a, from someone who enjoys running and enjoys sport, I think the idea
00:40:18.820
of, of doing it for the pure sake of enjoyment is something that sort of, I took away from this book
00:40:24.960
and I still go on runs, uh, these days where, you know, they're, they're shorter every year, but
00:40:31.680
where I have this moment where I'm, you know, my most recent one was down in Mexico, um, on this
00:40:39.560
sort of abandoned beach where I ran for, for miles and then into the hills. And I remember stopping and
00:40:44.740
being, you know, having this sort of exalted moment where, you know, running was sort of beauty and it
00:40:51.560
was just pure and it was just for the sake of it, not for exercise, not for anything else. And that's
00:40:57.900
something that I think that Santee and Landy and Bannister all had in their own way. So that's one
00:41:04.580
thing that I sort of drew from their sort of experiences over the course of the story. And I
00:41:08.620
think the other one was kind of what it takes to, to achieve the impossible, this idea, and this is a
00:41:17.120
simplification, but this idea that, that Santee sort of ran from his heart throughout his life. Landy ran
00:41:24.660
from out of pure will and, and Bannister sort of approached it in the cerebral from his, from his
00:41:30.320
head. And I think that the way that Bannister was able to break four minutes first and the way that
00:41:35.140
he was able to, to win at the empire games was this ability finally to sort of combine that sort of
00:41:41.400
heart, will, and mind. And that's something that I, I see over and over in, in the other aspects or
00:41:47.540
other histories that I write about people doing pretty remarkable things.
00:41:51.260
Well, Neil, this has been a great conversation and I really recommend people go get the book
00:41:55.140
because the way you write and tell the story, like you're like on bated breath, you know,
00:41:59.640
and see how things turn out, even though you know how, even though you know how it's going to turn
00:42:04.140
out, you're still, you get pumped up. Where can people go to learn more about the, your work and
00:42:09.100
your book? Sure. So they can, my books are available in, in, you know, pretty much everywhere they sell
00:42:14.980
books. Or you can also love for you to come to the website. That's www.neilbaskum.com.
00:42:25.140
Awesome. Well, Neil Baskum, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:42:28.880
My guest today was Neil Baskum. He's the author of the book, The Perfect Mile. It's
00:42:32.600
available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Also head over to his site,
00:42:35.640
neilbaskum.com to learn more about his work. He's written a lot of great stuff on World War II.
00:42:39.940
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash perfect mile. We're going to find links to
00:42:43.740
resources. We're going to delve deeper into this topic.
00:42:58.640
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:43:02.840
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy this
00:43:06.200
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00:43:09.340
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00:43:12.980
Please consider recommending the show to a friend or family member. Word of mouth is how the show grows.
00:43:17.400
As always, thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you