OxBlog

Thursday, May 06, 2004

# Posted 3:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

AT A TIME WHEN PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL, grasping after new depths of crassness, has begun to auction the very covers of the bases on its diamonds to advertisers, the fiftieth anniversary of Sir Roger Bannister's first sub-four minute mile as a 25-year old medical student at Oxford comes as a welcome reminder of what we once had in sport and have lost.

Contemporary sport, professionalised and commercialised beyond all ability to relate to the massive egos of its performers, may attain to greater heights of athleticism, but has lost its capacity to inspire. It is difficult to pinpoint precisely where this took place, but it happened somewhere along the path between Bannister's muted, humble celebratory pint in an Oxford pub after he downplayed the greatest athletic achievement of humankind to reporters with the sportsmanship, decency, and sense of fair play of the England of his generation; and the more recent courtroom appearances, titanic salaries and athletic shoe sponsorship contracts, and rather less than inspiring behaviour off of the field of Pete Rose, Michael Jordan, Daryl Strawberry, or any of the other current legions of interchangeable bearers of Nike contracts whom history will fairly soon forget.

The man who from across the world raced Sir Roger to the mark and soon followed him across it, John Landy, is now remembered for his decision to stop racing in the 1956 Australian Championships, after he accidentally clipped the heels of world junior mile record holder, Ron Clarke, who fell. Landy (who would go on in life to serve as Governor of New Victoria) stopped and ran back to help Clarke to his feet, made sure that his competitor was all right, and then reentered the race - whereupon he caught the other runners and won the race and championship with a time of 4 minutes, 4.2 seconds.

The two men would race head-to-head in the 'Race of the Century' after both had broken the four-minute barrier. Bannister bested Landy, passing him on his right in the final stretch as Landy looked to his left. Landy accepted his defeat with grace, saying 'the better man won'; it was only much later revealed he had run with four stitches in his foot, the result of stepping on a flash bulb in bare feet.

Sir Roger told the BBC, "It may seem incredible today that the world record at this classic distance could be set by an amateur athlete, in bad weather, on a university running track."

Incredible indeed - both in the sense of unbelievable, and extraordinary.
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