3:59.4

Author:

By Bob Phillips

Format:

Paperback

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 3-4 days.

Price:

£12.95

Tagged with:

Athletics, Running, The Mile

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Further Details

• Published: 12th Mar 2004
• ISBN: 1903158494
• Pages: 256
• Photos: 60

From Word of Sport:

Mythic mile, o what images have ye spawned...Bannister and George, Coe, Cram and Ovett - such is the glorious history of the only non-metric distance officially recognised for world-record purposes. Phillips' book acclaims all great milers from the running footmen of the 17th century onwards.

From the Publisher:

In 2004 the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous achievements in the entire history of sport will be celebrated - Roger Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile.
No athletics event has aroused such excitement. No single performance has attracted such feverish worldwide attention. Such is the magic of the mile that it remains the only non-metric distance which is still recognised for official World-record purposes.
The record has now been taken down to 3 minutes 43.13 seconds by Hicham El Guerrouj, of Morocco, and he would have left Bannister 120 yards behind, had they raced each other at their best. But is El Guerrouj, competing in an age of rampant professionalism, really a better miler than Bannister, who fitted in his training and racing between hospital duties as a doctor? Is Bannister better than Walter George, who ran a time of 4 minutes 12.75 seconds in 1886 which it was thought would never be beaten?
Bannister and George, together with Sydney Wooderson, Derek Ibbotson and then Coe, Cram and Ovett, have established Britain in the forefront of the mile event over the years. But four Americans, three New Zealanders, two Australians, two Swedes, a Finn, a Frenchman, an Algerian, a Tanzanian and now a Moroccan have each in turn held the World record. No other event has grasped such imagination of runners in every corner of the globe.
The mile was first contested seriously in the 17th Century. Running footmen raced on behalf of their lords and masters for wagers. There are stories of four minutes or faster having been run on public highways in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Of course, they cannot be true... or can they?
The story of this fascinating event is told in vivid detail in a book to be published next year, written by Bob Phillips, one of the world's foremost athletics historians, who has seen all the great milers of the last half-century in action and talked to world record-holders of an earlier era.