The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It

This narrative of the epic quest to break the four minute mile is almost impossible to put down. Interesting even for those not particularly into running. The lessons these guys learned while training to run apply to many aspects of life as well.

I found the climax of this story-Bannister and Landy's race in Vancouver in 1955-to be almost impossibly gripping. This whole book is just about perfect. It is about a particular athletic quest, and it is also about a key transition period in sport. There were two related aspects to change at this time in track and field (and by extension other already professional sports). The more obvious was the glaring contradiction between the old, 100% pure amateur model on the one hand, and the growing business and media phenomenon we know today on the other. This subtext is brought out in the second part of the story, and especially in the sad tale of the straight-talking American, Wes Santee. But this was also a period of radical change in training methods. Emil Zatopek, the Czech runner who won the 5,000 meter, 10,000 meter, AND marathon runs at the 1952 Olympics, is the key figure at the outset of the book. His successes taught runners like Bannister, Landy, and Santee that more training, and harder training, would yield faster times. The author outlines older ideas of conditioning that look ridiculously precious and half-hearted by modern standards. As a masters athlete I was especially struck by this phase of the story, and the author does a good job of recapping the sorts of training the runners did throughout. The three are so characteristic of their countries, they could almost be fictional types. American Wes Santee is brash and outspoken. It is he who calls the financial bluff of the Neanderthal-like powers that ruled amateur athletics in his day, and it is he who is most severely victimized in the process. (In a kind of entrapment scenario, he was given extra money by one set of AAU officials, and then banned for life by others.) He is also impeded by having to subordinate his individual goals to that of his college team's. John Landy is the hard-working Aussie, scrabbling along with the weakest home-grown competitive environment and the most grueling training routine. Roger Bannister is the idealistic, individualistic and long-suffering Brit. "When he goes out to run," one of his mates says, "he looks like a man going to the electric chair." The sportswriters are awfully grandiose in the England of his day, and Bannister's contemplative manner is indeed a bit Shakespearean. I have only two small quibbles with this book. One is tiny, especially for the non-athlete: the author pokes good fun at old conditioning ideas, all the way back to the Greeks, but I would have preferred if he had brought modern physiological science to bear a little on the shifting trends of the early fifties. By modern lights Bannister, Landy, and Santee did an awful lot of hammering. This was much better than doing very little of anything, which was approximately the state of things before Zatopek came along. But now we know that there are distinct benefits to long, slow distance training, even for four-minute races. During his brief after-histo

The Perfect Mile is about the conquest of the four-minute mile, which like the ascent of Mt. Everest, stood in the early 50s as one of the last great frontiers of human endeavor. Three runners emerged as candidates to be the first to break through this barrier. One, Roger Bannister, was British. A full-time medical student and intern, he approached sport of track as the last of the consummate amateurs in the traditional mold. He had little coaching and devised his own training methods. Perceived by many in England as the potential resurrection of British athletics, in a sad state at the time, he carried the heavy load of hopeful expectations thrust upon him by a grim British nation suffering through post-war shortages and austerity. Considered aloof by his enemies in the British press, he possessed two powerful secret weapons: an advanced medical knowledge of the causes of and the techniques to combat fatigue and muscle failure, and an incredible capacity to ignore pain in the late stages of a race and unleash an extraordinary kick. The Australian, John Landy, competed by seeing to it that he was the best conditioned athlete on the track. In the early 50s Australia was an athletic backwater. After returning home to Australia from the disappointment of failing to even make the semifinal qualifying heat in the mile at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Landy embarked on a brutal training regimen, inspired by the physical fitness guru and great Czech runner Emil Zatopek who won gold at Helsinki in the 5000 meter, 10,000 meter and marathon events, and who Landy humbly approached as an acolyte near the close of the games. By the time the 4-minute mark was in Landy's sights, he was winning almost all of his races as "the human rabbit", leading from the starting gun and simply running the legs off his competition by setting a punishing pace. The American, Wes Santee, was the youngest and probably the most naturally gifted of these runners. He competed for the University of Kansas, and was soon breaking records, including the world record for the 1500 meter event, and the American collegiate mile record, which he took from the legendary Glenn Cunnningham, former holder of the world record for the mile. Intensely competitive, Santee loved big crowds and high-impact races. His biggest handicaps were his cold and totally unsupportive father, and even worse, the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union), led by the ogre-ish Avery Brundage, which controlled U.S. track and field, and all eligibility for the Olympics with an iron fist. As Santee became more and more famous and independent, he began to be perceived more as a threat than as an asset to the power structure of so-called amateur athletics in America. The perfect mile is a terrific page-turner and is packed with goodies from beginning to end. The writing is pitched just right: flowing, colorful, detailed, not dry, and never simplistic or trite. It starts with a brief thumbnail history of the mile e

It's a story of epic granduer at the center of sports endeavor. Neal Bascomb evokes the attitudes of a time when amatuer sports had high purpose and purity, and the meaning of competition resonated the excellence of individual achievement and national ideals. Bascomb drives the narrative with remarkable skill, revealing the tension, irony, bitter disappointment, and eventual triumph of Roger Bannister, and examines lengths talented competitors will go to test themselves against an idea for the sake of the idea itself. This book should be requiired reading for anyone who wants to know what it takes to be a champion. Bascomb brings back a great era.

Anyone who grew up with the middle distance rivalries of Bannister, Landy and Santee in the 50s or David Coleman's BBC commentary to Coe, Ovett and Cram in the 80s will be blown away by this masterpiece by Neal Bascomb.You may know some, or all (or none-at-all reading some of the other reviews!) of what happened back in the 50s when middle distance running and the four minute mile captured the headlines around the world. Of course there have been many incredible moments in middle distance running since and we can all list other great middle distance runners from Coe to Coughlan to El Guerrouj. But Bascomb has taken one of the great moments of the 20th Century and brought it back to life for you and I to relive, be blown away, and walk away at the end richer for it. After you've read it, you'll want to tell everyone the story, but please dont. Leave the storytelling to Neal Bascomb.

Terrific story of three great men from different continents who are more than just athletes but are men with academic responsibilities that come first but they found time to train under unique circumstances while trying to break the four minute mile barrier on cinder tracks. Banister is well know as the 1952 Olympian who is racing against his own personal time knowing his completion of medical school will end his career soon as he tries to break the barrier before anyone else. John Landy is the modest Australian somewhat isolated who trains virtually at when he can and he has a break through after leaving Cerutty's unique Stoatan training program that may have given him the necessary base to perform at a high level. Wes Santee is the Kansas miler whose coach puts the team above individualism that seems to cost Santee the opportunity to run fresh against major competition. All three come to a head in 1954, as it is virtually a race of opportunity since either of the three appears to be able to break it. Bannister literally streaks ahead with his training partners in a controversial but legitimate first sub four-minute mile. Landy roars back weeks later with an amazing front led 3:57. The second climax of the book is the great show down between the two sub fours at the Vancouver games. Santee cannot be there due to his commitment to the Marines. Landy runs in spite of an injury, keeps it secret but runs another sub four after leading virtually from the start but is cut down by Bannister at the end. Terrific book about three great men that you have to admire and you feel for Santee who has limited individual opportunities and is handcuffed by the rigid AAU officials who also limit his opportunities seemingly in pay back for his free spirit. Wonderful book that will charge up any former or current track athlete particularly when you think how just rain could ruin any attempt by making ruts and lakes in the cinder track and even after rolling off the water and repaving the track, the dampness would remain making the track heavy to run on. The author also fills you in on what else was going on in the 50's and punctuates the book with quotes from classical writers such as Lewis Carroll that have some metaphorical relationship to the chase for the record. The racing passages are so exciting, you can literally feel the lactic acid building up in your legs while reading of their attempts to run those last 200 yards in those gallant attempts at the record.