Bannister’s Sub-4 Minute Mile Named Greatest Athletic Achievement

For Forbes' panel of experts, editors and readers, one feat did emerge as a clear winner: the first sub-4 by Roger Bannister in 1954

By David M. Ewalt with Lacey Rose, Forbes.com

At their best, sports are about more than just winning games and diverting crowds. They test the limits of what...

An Exclusive Club

Forty years after Roger Bannister broke four minutes, the brotherhood of Mile record holders gathered to honor their grand obsession

By Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated

Never join someone who eclipses you. Align yourself with one who increases your luster. The man who puts you in the shade...

My First Sub-4

There was a lengthy pause as the three timekeepers compared their watches in order to come up with the official time, and then there was the announcement, “It has happened again!”

By Craig Masback

The quest for my first sub-4 minute Mile began on the streets of Rome and finished on Oxford’s...

The 3:49.4 Special

He had promised to go for the Mile record, and New Zealand's John Walker delivered, smashing the old mark by 1.6 seconds!

By Kenny Moore, Sports Illustrated

As Roger Bannister had 21 years earlier, John Walker worried about the wind. He had talked the officials at the meet in Goteborg, Sweden...

My First Sub-4

I remember being on fire crossing the finish line, as if I didn’t want to stop running.

By Eamonn Coghlan

I was barely 18 months old when Roger Bannister became the first person in the world to run a sub-4 minute Mile on May 6, 1954. This historic achievement still resonates 64 years on....

4 Minutes and 20 Years

In 1954, gasping with effort on Oxford's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister ran the first 4 minute Mile. Now a prominent neurologist and chairman of the British Sports Council, his celebrity is undimmed, although critics say his idealist's view of athletics is anachronistic.

By Kenny Moore,...

Sportsman of the Year: 1966

Mile star Jim Ryun, 19, the youngest person ever selected as SI's Sportsman

By Sports Illustrated

In its first issue, in August 1954, Sports Illustrated reported the duel of the original 4 minute Milers, Roger Bannister and John Landy, at the British Empire Games in Vancouver. Bannister won...

The Joy of Running

The warm and personal story of a runner's boyhood, his first experiences in running, his youthful ambitions and frustrations, and how he developed the power he felt within him to become the greatest Miler of all-time

By Roger Bannister, Sports Illustrated

I remember a moment when I stood...

1954 & Its Sportsman: Roger Bannister

The year brought shining performances in a host of sports, but the electrifying running of history's first 4 minute Miler—a man of no fanfare—made him year's pre-eminent Man of Sport

By Gerald Holland, Sports Illustrated

If ever a good speech ruined a dinner it was that delivered by Dr. Roger...

Duel of the Four-Minute Men

Bannister surges to victory in the heart-stirring Commonwealth Games Mile; first time two men sub-4 minutes in the same Mile race

By Paul O'Neil, Sports Illustrated

VANCOUVER, B.C. - The art of running the Mile consists, in essence, of reaching the threshold of unconsciousness at the instant...