Best of - Sir Roger Bannister: The Mile of the Century

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2021

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

On the morning of May 6th, 1954, Roger Bannister achieved what most people believed was not humanly possible: he ran a mile in under four minutes. It is considered one of the greatest athletic achievements of all time, alongside Sir Edmund Hillary's ascent of Mt. Everest. Bannister was a medical student at the time. He had already been to the Olympics, two years before. And he had spent eight years developing his own unique approach to training - one that allowed him to very gradually improve speed, while leaving time for his studies. He talks here about his childhood in wartime England, and about daring to dream the impossible. This episode was originally published in 2016. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2016-2021

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Alice.
0:06.0	Why do some people achieve the impossible?
0:10.0	It's a question that often comes to mind when the Olympics roll around and world records get broken.
0:16.4	But there are some records that are stubborn.
0:19.6	Florence Griffith Joyners, shattering times in the women's 100 and 200 meter dashes, for instance,
0:26.4	have not been touched for 33 years.
0:29.6	Records like that begin to make you think, maybe the human body is just not capable of more.
0:36.7	But a woman named Gabby Thomas just came extremely close to beating Flojo's record
0:42.2	at the 2021 U.S. Olympic trials for track and field,
0:45.6	and that was in the middle of a punishing heat wave.
0:48.8	So stay tuned for Tokyo.
0:50.8	Gabby Thomas is a recent Harvard graduate and she's studying to be an
0:55.0	epidemiologist. Reading about her this week reminded me of the amazing
1:00.1	Roger Bannister. He was a medical student who ran in the 1952 Olympics and two years
1:06.6	later became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. It had been considered an impossible feat until it wasn't.
1:17.4	We featured Roger Bannister on an episode in 2016, two years before he died.
1:23.9	As Olympic anticipation builds,
1:26.3	it seems like a good time to run it again.
1:29.4	Had a maid, this child is gifted.
1:35.0	And I heard that enough that I started to believe it.
1:38.0	If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity,
1:41.0	and you don't take it, you may never have another job.
	...

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