The Art of Manliness - #374： The Race to Break the 4-Minute Mile

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now you may

00:00:18.680 have heard of Roger Bannister and his amazing feat of breaking the four minute mile market

00:00:22.100 back in 1954. But the story leading up to this milestone of human performance often

00:00:26.500 gets overlooked and is filled with drama and lessons on grit, determination and living

00:00:30.640 a balanced life. My guest today wrote a book sharing the story behind Bannister's record

00:00:34.380 and the two other men who were also vying to break it. His name is Neil Bascom and his

00:00:38.020 book is The Perfect Mile, Three Athletes, One Goal and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve

00:00:42.180 It. We begin our discussion talking about the lead up to the race in which the four minute

00:00:45.300 mile barrier was broken and how many doctors in the early 20th century believed achieving

00:00:49.300 this milestone was physiologically impossible. Neil then tells us about the lies of the three

00:00:53.620 men racing to be the first to run a sub four minute mile and shares insights from them

00:00:57.400 on the way the ethos of sports changed as it transformed from amateur pursuit to professional

00:01:01.740 job as well as the ability of people to push the limits of the human body by sheer mental

00:01:05.700 will. Really great show. After the show is over, check out the show notes at a1.is slash

00:01:09.740 perfect mile. Neil Bascom, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So you spent a lot

00:01:28.200 of your career writing books about war, specifically World War II. In your book The Perfect Mile, you

00:01:35.220 take a look at the epic race to break the four minute mile. I'm curious, what led you to write

00:01:40.440 about this story? Was there some kind of World War II connection there or was it just an interest

00:01:43.900 of yours that you had? No, actually Perfect Mile was the second book that I ever wrote that actually

00:01:49.720 before I started writing about war. And my inspiration for it was basically from high school. I was a high

00:01:57.900 school cross country runner. And my coach suggested to all his runners really not really a suggestion

00:02:05.480 ordered us to read Bannister's memoir, the four minute mile Roger Bannister's memoir. And I was

00:02:13.120 absolutely blown away by it. It's sort of gave me sort of added impetus to to run and to try to push

00:02:20.540 myself. And, you know, later in, and as I started my writing career, I looked back to that story and

00:02:27.740 saw that, that no one had really done a history of, of really the whole story about the breaking

00:02:33.760 of the four minute mile, that it was more than just Roger Bannister story, but it was a story about

00:02:39.360 three men all in their early twenties trying to achieve this landmark record.

00:02:46.080 So before we get to these three men, let's talk about the backstory of this, of the four minute

00:02:50.040 mile record. How long had people been trying to break a four minute mile before these three guys

00:02:56.640 started doing it in Gusto in the 1950s? Well, it dates back quite a bit, actually. I mean,

00:03:02.400 as early as 1770, a runner said that he had run the four minute mile down London's old street. There

00:03:09.780 was no official record of that. And it's a very likely a myth, but probably in the, in the late 1800s,

00:03:18.060 the mile and this sort of idea of, of achieving a four minute mile really came to four. There was

00:03:25.080 what was called at that time, the mile of the century by two, two brothers who were competing

00:03:30.400 with each other in, in West London. And they got the record down to four minutes and 18 seconds.

00:03:37.160 And then as the 20th century hit, you find that the tracks are improving. Stopwatches are improving

00:03:44.300 as well. And this idea of, of running four laps, four quarter miles in four minutes, the sort of

00:03:51.860 perfect balance of that really captivated people. And runners began chipping away towards the four

00:04:00.660 minute mile. So Pavo Nurmi, the Finnish runner, got it down to 410 in 1937. Sidney Wooderson got it

00:04:08.740 down to 406. And then two Swedes in, in the sort of World War II years, knocked that down to, to

00:04:16.420 basically four minutes in one second. And then that's where it stood. And people thought or believed in

00:04:23.860 many ways that, that four minutes was an achievement that simply was impossible. Yeah. What did, I mean,

00:04:29.760 you even had physiologists getting, you know, chiming in on this. What did they think would happen if

00:04:33.660 a man did run a minute or run a mile under four minutes? Yeah. I mean, the, I'd say, you know,

00:04:40.980 physiologists, probably the, the good ones would not go to the hyperbole that many went to, but my book

00:04:48.100 opens up with the, the statement that men thought that people would die if they ever attempted to

00:04:54.840 reach four minutes, that the heart, that the lungs simply didn't have the capacity for it.

00:04:59.320 And so there was this barrier, both sort of, I think physiologically, but probably more

00:05:07.060 psychologically that it was an impossible achievement. So why, why is the four minute mile such a hard

00:05:13.940 feet? I mean, what makes it different from say, you know, an 800 meter sprint or a 5k?

00:05:19.620 Well, I think the mile and milers say this, but I think, you know, track coaches and, and many people

00:05:26.500 who are sort of intimately involved in, in the sort of running world, consider the mile, the kind of

00:05:33.100 perfect combination, perfect balance between speed and endurance. You'd need both of those to become an

00:05:41.600 expert miler. So if you're a marathoner, endurance is, is, is, is what you need for most. If you're a

00:05:48.020 sprinter doing a hundred yard dash, speed is what you need most. But if you're going to run a mile

00:05:53.000 under four minutes, you need to both be able to sustain incredible amounts of speed over a fair

00:05:59.820 amount of distance. If you ever try, in fact, to come close to what a four minute mile is, I would

00:06:06.620 suggest running on a treadmill and, and knocking it down the speed until you're as fast as you can

00:06:12.300 go. And that's probably about a five minute mile and your legs are just going like crazy. So you can

00:06:18.000 imagine what improving that speed by 20, 25% is about. And how are people training for this before

00:06:24.920 these three characters you follow in the book started really gunning for it? Were they scientific

00:06:29.140 about it or were they just like, just run as hard as I can until I can't anymore? Yeah. I mean,

00:06:33.900 the, the training at this time was not particularly advanced. I think the, the big training movement

00:06:42.120 that, that really sort of ramped up speed subsequent to these events are two a day training sessions at

00:06:49.680 this point in time, you know, people weren't using coaches really that much. They were running once a

00:06:54.840 day. They were doing limited intervals and they were basically in, in some respects, just running long

00:07:01.580 distances and hoping that that would improve their times. There was a runner named Emil Zadipak, who

00:07:07.460 at this period of time was, was beginning to sort of train in a more modern way, but, you know,

00:07:15.540 Bannister and these others who were racing to break the four minute mile, when they started, they were

00:07:20.340 really training under sort of rudimentary methods at best. Right. And what I also love about this book,

00:07:26.280 besides telling the story of these three characters is how you describe what sport was like during this

00:07:33.300 time in the early part of the 20th century, particularly running. How was it different

00:07:37.480 than from what it is today? Well, I think the fundamental difference is this idea of the amateur

00:07:44.820 athlete, the ethos of that, the idea that, you know, at this time that again, coaches were, were

00:07:52.760 scorned, uh, running and, and competition and athletics was about fun and about the effortlessness

00:08:00.360 of it. Uh, there's this, there's this anecdote, which I love particularly. There was an Oxford sprinter,

00:08:06.420 a guy named Bevel Rudd. And just to give you an idea of, of what people considered an athlete

00:08:13.140 should be or how they should approach their sport. Uh, he was a sprinter. He arrived at the quarter

00:08:18.560 mile race with a cigar chomping in his mouth. He put it down on the side of the track. He ran his

00:08:25.120 sprint. He won. He picked up the still smoking cigar, stuck it back in his mouth and sauntered away from

00:08:32.420 the track. That is an extreme example of what, you know, the sort of amateur effortless athletic runner

00:08:39.380 was about, but it gives you an idea of the world that these people were living in at the time.

00:08:46.480 So it wasn't like today where like you have athletes who dedicate 24 seven to training for their,

00:08:52.460 their sport. Like they, they, the amateur athletes strive to have a well-balanced life and sport was

00:08:57.740 just one of many things they did. Yeah. Sport was one of many things. It was not a career. It was not

00:09:02.880 something that they endeavored to make money off of. They thought that they would run in their early

00:09:09.480 twenties and then they would go off and pursue a career. Often they were studying at the same time

00:09:14.660 and there just was no expectation. Then this was more than just a sort of intense hobby.

00:09:21.880 And this was particularly a British ethos, correct? Like a United Kingdom?

00:09:26.020 Yeah. I mean, I, I would say this, the, the, the British exemplified this the best. I think the

00:09:32.820 Americans in sort of typical American fashion were exceeding and, and sort of professionalizing 0.95

00:09:38.940 what running in athletics was, but even in the United States and one of the principal characters

00:09:44.280 in the story, Wes Santee was bedeviled by this, I think evolving world between amateur athletics and

00:09:52.680 what sport was to become, which was professional athletics. And it was one of the reasons, again,

00:09:57.060 I wrote this book. I just felt it was this particularly nice moment in sport where the sort

00:10:03.740 of last of the great amateur athletes achieves a sort of landmark record. I think subsequent to that,

00:10:10.400 that world sort of slipped away from us.

00:10:13.280 And also it was interesting. This is going on all the race for the four minute mile or the sub four

00:10:17.860 minute mile was going on at the same time when this other sort of amateur idea of the,

00:10:22.200 the amateur adventurer. So you had people trying to scale Mount Everest and doing all these other

00:10:27.180 epic things. It was kind of that, it was catching that same sort of vein and it was sort of the last 0.99

00:10:31.920 of the, the amateur adventures as well.

00:10:33.820 Yeah, it was, it was this idea. I mean, Edmund Hillary, um, who was in the, uh, I hate to use this

00:10:40.460 word, but I will, uh, the milieu of, uh, of Roger Bannister and these others, these, these men who

00:10:46.960 consider themselves adventurers, explorers, pushing both sort of not only the personal records, but,

00:10:54.020 but also great achievements.

00:10:55.480 So let's talk about these characters specifically. We, everyone probably knows Roger Bannister.

00:10:59.180 So we'll save him for last. Let's talk about, you mentioned Wes Santee. There were three individuals.

00:11:04.380 Wes Santee was one of them. He was an American, but tell us more about his, his background and

00:11:08.700 how he approached breaking the, the sub four minute mile.

00:11:13.080 So Wes Santee was, was the American, one of the three in the story all trying to, uh, achieve the,

00:11:21.380 the four minute mile at the same time. He was, you know, from a small town, uh, Kansas farm,

00:11:28.880 an awful guy who beat Wes pretty terribly. Whenever he tried to sort of perform his sport growing up,

00:11:37.020 his father wanted him to work the farm. He didn't want him to be interested in athletics or anything like

00:11:41.320 that didn't want him to run. Uh, and running for Wes Santee was his way out of that world away from the

00:11:49.900 farm. He was recruited to the university of Kansas by the great track coach there, Bill Easton,

00:11:55.720 and became very quickly, um, the greatest miler in America by, by great strides. And Wes was quite a

00:12:05.620 bit of a character. He was, he was very brash. He loved the, loved the glamour, loved the press.

00:12:12.120 He was considered the quote unquote, dizzy Dean of the cinders. He would approach the track. He would

00:12:18.200 say, I'm going to run this time, like Babe Ruth kind of pointing to the stands where he's going to

00:12:22.500 hit the home run. And then he'd run that exact time. And he was competing both, uh, off for the

00:12:29.840 university and then also trying to, to achieve the Olympics in, in 1952. And I think one of the

00:12:36.800 sort of foundations of the story is that all three of these individuals competing for this, uh, Roger

00:12:42.700 Bannister, Wes Santee, and then John Landy all had approached the 52 Helsinki Olympics, hoping and

00:12:51.760 believing that they would, would win or, or at least place in the medal. And none of them did. And so

00:12:59.560 by the end of that Olympics, they were rearing to go to try to sort of prove themselves. And the mile

00:13:06.640 was the way that they were going to do that. Breaking the four minute mile was, was in some

00:13:11.340 ways redemption for all three of these runners. And for Wes, uh, who was still competing for the

00:13:18.520 university of Kansas and was running races almost on a weekly basis, not only running the mile, but

00:13:25.300 even longer distances, he was just sort of constantly, constantly running, running, running, running

00:13:31.520 and competing, competing. And he was as though he was shooting for the four minute mile, he also had

00:13:40.400 the responsibilities of so many other things. And that's in, in sort of very stark contrast to the

00:13:46.300 two other runners, uh, Bannister and Landy who were much more focused on simply breaking the four

00:13:54.380 minute mile. That was their ambition. That was the focus of all their efforts. And so in some ways,

00:13:59.720 Santee was, was handicapped by the sort of constant running and constant racing as opposed to the two

00:14:07.200 others. So you mentioned earlier that Santee was sort of bedeviled by this transition from sort of

00:14:13.460 amateur athletics to the professionalization of the sport. I mean, how did, how did that play out

00:14:18.960 in his life and in his running career? Any examples of that? It, you know, it did not play out well for,

00:14:24.140 for Wes Santee. I mean, Wes was, and I met and interviewed all, all three of these gentlemen,

00:14:30.480 um, over the course of, of, of writing the book. And, you know, even in his, in his seventies,

00:14:39.080 Wes was still sort of heartbroken over what happened to him in this period of time. Basically,

00:14:45.780 uh, amateur athletics in the United States, a lot of people were making money except for

00:14:51.860 the athletes themselves. You sort of almost can, can, uh, sort of draw a line to what's happening

00:14:57.980 and in college athletics, college football and the like, where you have this world in many ways,

00:15:04.880 exploiting these athletes. And Wes, who was, was not a shy individual pushed up against that and was

00:15:14.640 offered, you know, travel money basically, uh, to go to different events across the country.

00:15:21.480 And because he was so brash, because he was so in your face, I think the athletic community in the U.S.

00:15:28.180 was, was intimidated or afraid, or in some ways, uh, wanted to sort of knock him down off that,

00:15:36.360 that stool. And they essentially did that over the course of the 1954 and ultimately ended up banning

00:15:44.480 him from, from racing right at the sort of crux or the most important moments of breaking a four

00:15:51.060 minute mile where he didn't end up getting his chance. And the, the, the organization you're

00:15:57.220 talking about here's the AAU, correct? Correct. Correct. So you mentioned earlier,

00:16:03.460 I'm somewhat guessing Santee never broke the four minute mile, correct? So Santee never broke the

00:16:09.160 four minute mile. He came within 30 seconds of it, but that was as close as he ever got.

00:16:14.820 And I think a combination of overrunning, overcompeting, uh, coupled with, uh, the AAU,

00:16:23.520 uh, controversy, which eventually, uh, forced him out of the sport, uh, kept them from achieving it.

00:16:29.740 And what did he do after his running career was over?

00:16:33.800 He, after his running career, he ended up selling insurance across Kansas and then, you know, made a

00:16:40.220 career that raised a family. But again, when I met him in Kansas in 2002, I believe, I mean,

00:16:47.420 he still talked very emotional about his father. In some ways he was, he was still a bit of an open

00:16:53.200 wound about what happened to him about the four minute mile and the AAU expulsion.

00:17:01.180 So let's, let's move over to John Landy. He was an Australian runner. How, how did being a runner

00:17:06.740 from us, Australia disadvantage him? And, or maybe how did it, that disadvantage perhaps give him an edge

00:17:12.260 as well? Well, I think that the disadvantage for Landy, at least in Australia was the sort of

00:17:21.560 lack of focus on, on running the running culture there, uh, growing up running and, and competing

00:17:30.740 in athletics was not necessarily something that a young Melbourne boy would aspire to be. Landy came

00:17:40.460 from a sort of middle-class background, nice family. He loved to chase butterflies. He came to running

00:17:47.180 late in his life or late in his, you know, teens and, but found that he had this sort of amazing,

00:17:54.320 uh, at this period ability to sort of push himself to, to compete out of almost sheer will.

00:18:02.240 And he was eventually recruited to join a sort of band of merry runners as I sort of look at it,

00:18:09.140 led by this kind of guru, I guess is the best way of explaining him, or he was a bit of a freak,

00:18:15.960 but he knew running very well, a man named Percy, uh, Saruti. And he was, he was a short guy. He's

00:18:23.980 about five foot two Saruti. And he ran barefoot. He ran around town in Melbourne, uh, shirtless wearing 0.96

00:18:32.200 these very small, um, shorts and recruited Landy and a bunch of other runners to, to train them to be

00:18:41.400 the best. And he had these sort of outlandish methods. Not only was running barefoot sort of

00:18:47.380 part of that, but running up and down sand dunes, running through, through nature,

00:18:52.760 living off a vegetarian root based diet, considered running kind of, uh, it's the best way of saying

00:19:00.080 it is sort of as an art as expression of art. And Landy thrived under that for, for a while because

00:19:07.780 it, it, uh, it was fun and it was something where he found himself on a team and, and was sort of

00:19:14.800 pushing and getting better and better. But ultimately Saruti did not believe that, that will,

00:19:21.040 where running more and more was, was the way to achieve and to get better. And Landy at a certain

00:19:27.960 point decided that he could train himself and he could push himself harder and longer than anybody

00:19:35.140 else. And so you have Landy, I think of all three runners, probably the one who trained the most,

00:19:41.700 who trained the hardest was running, you know, hours and hours at night, uh, after school and really

00:19:49.340 ground himself down and pushed himself. And probably I'd say was the best conditioned, uh, runner of,

00:19:57.580 of the three of these challengers to the four minute mile. Yeah. When I was reading about Landy's

00:20:02.460 coach, it reminded me of sort of like kind of the paleo movement that you see today, right?

00:20:09.300 Yes. I mean, and imagine that in, in, in, in 1954, right? So that was, that was not de rigueur.

00:20:18.580 And so you mentioned Landy after he broke, he, he got more intense with his training. Did his

00:20:23.200 style of running change after he broke that broke from this coach that allowed him to, you know,

00:20:28.380 give him an edge in his, in his running? No, I wouldn't say his, his style of running changed

00:20:34.360 dramatically. I mean, his, his stride changed a little bit. He, you know, the, the barefoot

00:20:42.380 running, uh, helped augment that, but it was for, for Landy, it was really about putting in the miles

00:20:50.140 about keeping a notebook and, and writing, you know, okay, today I went eight miles in the morning.

00:20:56.820 I went, I did this speed tomorrow. I'm going to do nine miles. And then just ramping that up

00:21:01.760 all on his own without any, without any great interval training or sort of scientific methods

00:21:07.980 about it, just sheer putting on the miles to, to improve. And, you know, it, it did wonders. He

00:21:14.640 became the, the, the greatest Australian miler, uh, at the time and steadily chipped down at the

00:21:22.300 four minute mile and got very close to being the first person to break it.

00:21:27.020 And he also, you mentioned that he, while he didn't have a coach, he did look at how some of the

00:21:31.640 other runners were training. I guess he took a lot of inspiration from those Finnish guys, right?

00:21:35.900 That were doing really well in the Olympics.

00:21:37.600 He did from, particularly from Zatapak, who we met at Helsinki Olympics and took away some of those 0.99

00:21:43.080 interval training methods. But, but again, all sort of notes, no, no kind of rigorous schedule

00:21:52.140 that we have today where you, you know, you're going to do, you know, two minutes,

00:21:58.780 hard bursts and then 15 seconds off and, and, and at this heart rate and at this level of effort,

00:22:05.400 it was just, he was experimenting by, by feel more than anything else.

00:22:10.640 So let's move to Bannister. So he was from England. What was his philosophy towards running

00:22:16.620 and athletics in general?

00:22:18.880 Yeah. I mean, Bannister was, was the archetypal, um, amateur athlete. He was conservative guy.

00:22:27.820 He was quiet. He was cerebral. He was born in Harrow, England. Um, loved running from a sort of very

00:22:34.480 early age. I think one of his sort of crystalline memories is, is running on a beach as a child and

00:22:40.760 that sort of freedom of movement. And he writes beautifully about that in his memoir about running,

00:22:45.360 but I think above and beyond anything else, uh, a love of running, I think what you had in Bannister

00:22:53.360 was just an absolute killer in terms of competitive will. Um, I mean, meeting him, uh, years ago,

00:23:05.340 you know, the intensity of his eyes, the intensity with which he spoke of these races, you know,

00:23:12.500 almost 50 years later was absolutely remarkable. Um, and so Bannister is the, is the amateur athlete,

00:23:19.960 you know, although he wanted to be the best, um, he also wanted to, um, pursue his, his career.

00:23:27.080 And so at this time of the training, he was, he was, um, training to break the four minute mile. He was,

00:23:34.500 um, studying to become a doctor. He was interning at St. Mary's hospital. Um, he attended Oxford.

00:23:40.880 So he was, you know, achieving this sort of excellence, um, in medicine to become a neurologist,

00:23:48.200 uh, while at the same time trying to break this, um, this record. And so he had very little time to

00:23:55.540 do that. He was training, um, you know, at lunchtime, uh, at best a half hour, uh, walking to the track

00:24:03.140 near the hospital and, and putting in his time and then going back and, and seeing patients. Uh, he was

00:24:09.960 again, the sort of the supreme example of the amateur athlete, at least at the beginning of,

00:24:16.400 of, of this story that subsequently sort of evolved as he got closer and closer to four minutes.

00:24:23.240 Yeah. So you mentioned Landy, his training was sort of experimentation, trial and error,

00:24:27.460 but Bannister with his medical background, he, he kind of got scientific with how to best approach

00:24:34.300 breaking the four minute mile. And he kind of, he researched it. Like he had this, he had,

00:24:38.000 I guess he developed this contraption to touch, to test a VO two max, correct?

00:24:42.160 Yeah. He was testing a VO two max. Uh, he was testing a lactate act, lactate acid in his,

00:24:48.240 his muscles. He had built this treadmill and in the lab, uh, at school and, you know, he would put

00:24:55.800 himself on that thing and hook himself up and run as fast as he could and then hop off and take,

00:25:01.640 you know, blood samples and then do it again. Um, and really trying to see from a scientific level,

00:25:08.660 what was possible, what was physiologically possible and how to sort of push himself,

00:25:15.500 um, to a higher level. He experimented on his friends, uh, Chris Brasher and Chris Jadaway,

00:25:21.760 um, and other people, uh, he was running a sort of scientific experiment in some ways on,

00:25:27.580 on the four minute mile. And I think for a period of time that overwhelmed him, um, in the sense that

00:25:34.300 he was approaching this from a purely sort of mental level. Um, and I think again, as the story

00:25:42.320 evolved, he had to sort of embrace that sort of love of running, which I think Santee probably

00:25:48.720 exemplified more than anybody else. Um, and that sort of will that John Landy sort of exemplified

00:25:55.700 probably more than anybody else. Bannister in many ways need to sort of combine those

00:26:01.280 sort of will love running and the, and the sort of mental, um, uh, breakdown of what was absolutely

00:26:10.360 necessary to break four minutes. And what's also interesting about Bannister. So he started off

00:26:14.900 like Landy. Well, no, he started off training by himself, but unlike Landy who later, you know,

00:26:20.660 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 0.94

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. 0.99

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 0.99

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.

00:42:21.940 N-E-A-L-B-A-S-C-O-M-B.com. 0.99

00:42:25.140 Awesome. Well, Neil Baskum, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:42:27.740 That's been awesome. Thank you.

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 show, gotten something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on

00:43:09.340 iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you so much.

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

00:43:21.480 to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - January 25, 2018

#374： The Race to Break the 4-Minute Mile

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