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Interesting read and argument of being one of sports greatest achievements
I read an article years ago saying that a bunch of scientists determined that the absolute fastest a human being could run the 100 meter dash was 9.3 seconds (that number may not be right but it was something like that)
Scientists were wrong about breaking the 4 minute mile, are they wrong about 100 meters too?
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Perhaps it takes one sporting giant to truly appreciate the towering performance of another.
Exactly 70 years ago today, Sir Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, a target that existed purely in the realms of the fantastical until, on that blustery Oxford day in 1954, he subverted the possible.
How good was it? Well, when I asked Sebastian Coe to put it into a wider context last week, he replied: “On every metric, I think it is arguably at the top of all sporting achievements in the last 100 years.”
That is high praise indeed from someone who was himself a double Olympic champion and broke multiple world records. And while the fact that Bannister’s time of 3min 59.4sec chopped two seconds off the previous world record is staggering enough, that was only part of Coe’s case.
“People don’t appreciate the mental barrier that he also had to break through,” he pointed out. “He was a doctor. And he would say to me: ‘I used to read articles in medical journals saying that if anybody tried it, they would probably die in the process’.”
Coe acknowledged other significant obstacles: Bannister grew up on wartime rations, raced on a cinder track more suitable to speedway than fast times, and wore racing spikes so heavy that, when Coe held them decades later, he found that one weighed more than his two modern shoes combined.
Bannister also held down a full-time job and when he and Coe compared their training diaries before they broke their mile world records, they both laughed: “I probably did in three days the intensity of what he did in a week and a half,” says Coe of his good friend.…….
www.theguardian.com
I read an article years ago saying that a bunch of scientists determined that the absolute fastest a human being could run the 100 meter dash was 9.3 seconds (that number may not be right but it was something like that)
Scientists were wrong about breaking the 4 minute mile, are they wrong about 100 meters too?
========================
Perhaps it takes one sporting giant to truly appreciate the towering performance of another.
Exactly 70 years ago today, Sir Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, a target that existed purely in the realms of the fantastical until, on that blustery Oxford day in 1954, he subverted the possible.
How good was it? Well, when I asked Sebastian Coe to put it into a wider context last week, he replied: “On every metric, I think it is arguably at the top of all sporting achievements in the last 100 years.”
That is high praise indeed from someone who was himself a double Olympic champion and broke multiple world records. And while the fact that Bannister’s time of 3min 59.4sec chopped two seconds off the previous world record is staggering enough, that was only part of Coe’s case.
“People don’t appreciate the mental barrier that he also had to break through,” he pointed out. “He was a doctor. And he would say to me: ‘I used to read articles in medical journals saying that if anybody tried it, they would probably die in the process’.”
Coe acknowledged other significant obstacles: Bannister grew up on wartime rations, raced on a cinder track more suitable to speedway than fast times, and wore racing spikes so heavy that, when Coe held them decades later, he found that one weighed more than his two modern shoes combined.
Bannister also held down a full-time job and when he and Coe compared their training diaries before they broke their mile world records, they both laughed: “I probably did in three days the intensity of what he did in a week and a half,” says Coe of his good friend.…….
‘Greatest sporting feat in the last 100 years’: Roger Bannister’s sub four-minute mile
Sebastian Coe’s description of the doctor’s record-breaking run in 1954 underlines its enduring significance 70 years later
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