His record was broken in six weeks’ time by John Landy. He builds speed he holds back he crosses his pacer he finishes and collapses into the arms of the onlookers. Yet there he is, a four-minute poem whose horsey grace isn’t quite matched by the trundle of the camera following him. The day of the race was wet and cold, and he almost didn’t run it. The other racers that day, great athletes in their own right, were all Bannister’s friends and pacers. “Some have said that one element of courage is dignity in the face of adversity, and I now had plenty of practice,” he wrote later. He had prepared for the record for years, including his Olympics training. He went off hiking with a friend a few weeks before the race, to clear his head he went to work and had lunch with friends before turning up at the Iffley Road track where he would make history.Īmateur he was - in the best and most snobbish British tradition - but spontaneous he was not. In a world where corporations aggressively pursue talent to help them realise their record-breaking dreams, scouting them from small villages in East Africa and experimenting furiously with their environments to improve their times, it’s not hard to see why Bannister’s run seems like a genteel miracle. “A brick wall,” Landy called the four-minute mark. His great rival, the Australian John Landy, had also been trying for the record, and washed his hands of it just a month earlier. He was 25, ready to relinquish his athletic efforts and devote his time to the medical profession. Having failed previous attempts to run a mile in under four minutes, Bannister was preparing to retire. We know this because of Roger Bannister.īannister’s four-minute mile on a windy May evening in 1954 is probably the most famous story in track history after Pheidippides. We know that once this is accomplished, the dam will break and more men and women will be running two-hour marathons than we can even dream of on this day, in March 2018. We know, or can be reasonably certain, that it will be accomplished in a matter of years. Bannister was active in medical, graduate and undergraduate education and served on numerous NIH study sections and DoD review panels prior to joining CSR.Passing the sportswear ads on Carter Road, I smiled to myself thinking of the distance between my clownish stumbling and the elite runners currently testing the limits of human endurance, as Nike and Adidas work overtime to find and train champions who can run a marathon in two hours. He has over 50 research publications and was named an NIA Butler-Williams Scholar in recognition of his commitment to aging research. Bannister’s NIA- and NINDS-supported research program was to provide information regarding the development of frailty in older individuals through the study of the fundamental mechanisms which underlie skeletal muscle excitability. Bannister relocated his laboratory to the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Following his promotion to associate professor, Dr. He received his post-doctoral training in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Colorado and was then appointed to a tenure-track faculty position in the University of Colorado Department of Medicine. studies in biology at the University of Iowa and completed his thesis at Utah State University. Study Section: Aging Systems and Geriatrics – ASGĭr. Review Branch: Aging and Neurodegeneration – AN Biography Division: Division of Neuroscience, Development and Aging – DNDA
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