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In athletics, the 'four-minute mile' is the running of a mile (1,609.344 metres) in under four minutes. It was once thought by some to be impossible, but since it was first achieved in 1954 the 'four minute barrier' has been broken by many male athletes, and is now the standard of all professional middle distance runners. In the last 50 years the mile record has been lowered by almost 17 seconds. Still, four minutes remains the standard by which all male amateur milers are measured.

Contents

Roger Bannister

Record holders

High School Athletes

See also

External links

Roger Bannister

On May 6, 1954, the Englishman Roger Bannister, a student at Oxford University, ran the first officially-recorded sub-four-minute mile at 3 minutes 59.4 seconds at the Iffley Road Track in Oxford, England. Six weeks later the Australian John Landy broke Bannister's record with 3:57.9. In November 2005 ''Forbes'' magazine declared, after interviewing a number of sports experts, that Bannister's four-minute mile was "the greatest athletic achievement" of all time.
During the fiftieth anniversary of Roger Bannister's run, the British athlete Ken Wood claimed that he broke four minutes four weeks before Bannister, in a training event [1] . However, a former editor of ''Athletics Weekly'', Mel Watman, wrote a letter of complaint to the magazine for running the story[2].
In 2005, a film was made about Roger Bannister's triumph entitled ''Four Minutes'' and aired on ESPN. There is also a 1988 mini-series ''The Four Minute Mile'', available on DVD.

Record holders

John Walker managed to run 129 sub-four-minute miles during his career, and American Steve Scott has run the most sub-four-minute miles, with 136. Currently, the mile record is held by Hicham El Guerrouj, who set a time of 3 minutes 43.13 seconds in Rome in 1999.
Another illustration of the progression of performance in the men's mile is that in 1994, forty years after Bannister's breaking of the barrier, the Irish runner Eamonn Coghlan became the first man over age 40 to run a sub-four-minute mile. Finally, Daniel Komen of Kenya holds the world 2-mile record of 7:58.61, set in 1997, which is two sub-4 minute miles back-to-back.
No woman has yet run a four-minute mile, although it is thought to be physically possible. The current women's record holder is Russian Svetlana Masterkova, with a time of 4 minutes 12.56 seconds.

High School Athletes

Running under four minutes for either a mile or just 1600 meters is considered an even higher milestone on the high school level due to the lower physical maturity and competition. One of Jim Ryun's biggest claims to fame was to be the first to break four minutes at the high school level in 1964 (with a time of 3 minutes 59 seconds) and the next year he lowered the mark to 3:55. On 15 December 1976, at a national track meet in Port Elizabeth, Sydney Maree, the only black athlete in the race, ran a 3:57.9 mile, making him the second high school student in history and the first, and only, South African to run under four minutes. In 2001, Alan Webb further lowered the high school record to 3:53, although his accomplishment is generally considered less impressive than Ryun's because it stacked up less favorably against the world competition at the time, was pushed under higher overall competition in the Prefontaine Classic, and was done on a faster all-weather track.

See also

★ World record progression for the mile run

★ Athletics (track and field)

★ Middle distance track event

External links

★ Forbes magazine declared four-minute mile as "greatest athletic achievement"