Roger Bannister Runs a Mile in Under Four Minutes

On 6 May 1954, twenty-five-year-old British medical student Roger Bannister achieved an athletic milestone at Oxford University's Iffley Road Track. Running one mile, or approximately 1.609 kilometres, in three minutes and 59.4 seconds, he became the first person verified to run the distance in under four minutes. Bannister maintained an average speed of 15 miles per hour throughout the race, assisted by fellow runners Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, who served as his pacemakers.

Prior to Bannister's performance, several historical accounts had claimed earlier sub-four-minute miles, though athletics historians and statisticians have treated these claims with considerable skepticism. In May 1770, a London street trader named James Parrott was reported to have run a measured mile along Old Street in four minutes to win a wager, a story that the statistician Mel Watman dismissed as folklore because neither the distance nor the timing could be checked. In the late nineteenth century, Captain Luther North credited Pawnee runner Big Hawk Chief with a mile run in three minutes and 58 seconds, but no such account met the standards later required for an official record.