Bannister, Roger Gilbert

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English track and field athlete. He was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. He achieved this feat at Iffley Road, Oxford, England, on 6 May 1954, in a time of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.

Career highlights

World records
4 × 1-mile relay (member of GB & NI squad) 1953; 1 mile 1954

Commonwealth Games
gold 1 mile 1954

European Championships
gold 1,500 metres 1954; silver 800 metres 1950

Bannister broke the four-minute barrier on one more occasion: at the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada, when he was involved with John Landy from Australia, in the ‘Mile of the Century’, so called because it was a clash between the only two people to have broken the four-minute barrier for the mile at that time. An eminent neurologist, he was knighted in 1975.

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