Some said he might kill himself and it wasn't wholly inconceivable. Roger Bannister, dead at 25. His brave attempt at greatness a step too far into the unknown. Such was the mystique surrounding the four-minute mile this time 50 years ago. For Bannister, it was a brick wall that simply needed smashing.
Even if it meant he'd expire his last that evening of May 6th, 1954, this was a race against time he wasn't about to lose.
"Ladies and gentleman. . . the time is three. . . " So goes the true story of sport's greatest barrier, broken at last.
Those that said he might die trying had a quick amendment, that the four-minute mile would never be the same. This time they were partly right. Just 46 days later, the Australian John Landy improved Bannister's 3:59.4 to 3:58.0 and history hardly noticed. A year later, three men ran under four minutes in the one race.
Yet, in other ways, much of that mystique has survived. Four minutes for the mile is still the truest measure of any middle-distance runner, a heaven that to be seen has to be believed. Half a century later, the number of Irish milers that have joined the still elite four-minute list is 39. And it's no ordinary list.
Even Bannister would have questioned the chances of a 41-year-old running the four-minute mile. Four men from the same nation averaging 3:57.5 back-to-back, or a sub-3:50 mile on the tight bends of indoor tracks. Whatever about running 100 four-minute miles in the one career. All other great mile barriers, broken or matched by the Irish.
It's a list that rightfully began in 1956 with Ronnie Delany, the same year he became Olympic champion in the metric version of the mile. Each of the 38 Irish milers that followed has his own stories attached, and does various amounts of damage to the myth of the four-minute mile. Some will leave Bannister wondering why he didn't run a whole lot quicker.
Delany tells the story of the four-minute mile he certainly hadn't planned, and where thoughts of winning flooded all thoughts of the clock. Unlike Bannister, he saw no psychological barrier. It all came wonderfully natural.
Yet, Eamonn Coghlan was so sure of the moment when he would run his first four-minute mile that he'd invited his father over to American to witness it. When he became the first man in history to run a sub-3:50 mile indoors it felt almost effortless.
Five years before Ray Flynn set the Irish mile record that still stands, he ran 3:59.4 to break four minutes for the first time, despite a bout of food poisoning the night before. It was like he'd walked through the barrier rather than broken it.
And when Marcus O'Sullivan went down to North Carolina as a 22-year-old he figured he too was ready to step through the apparently mythical barrier. He ran 3:58.84, and promptly threw up. There at least lies one story for those who consider the words pain and barriers as synonymous.
Together, those four milers helped develop the greatest of traditions in Irish athletics, and at their peak were mixing it with the some of the finest sporting figures on the world stage.
The beginning
June 1st, 1956, Compton, California
Back in the summer of 1949, John Joe Barry was single-handedly drumming up Irish interest in the four-minute mile. That August he ran 4:08.9 in front of 6,000 spectators at College Park in Dublin and according to one report was "grasping at the shadow of a four-minute mile". But only those with a soft spot for the athlete fondly called the Ballincurry Hare believe he could ever have approached that barrier. A year later, he started that grand tradition of Irish milers to attend Villanova University outside of Philadelphia, but Barry was a stamina athlete, not a four-minute miler. In a way, though, he was before his time.
Delany took the opposite approach to the mile. In the summer of 1955 he was still known exclusively as an 880-yard man, and yet on wet grass in College Park that August won his first ever mile in 4:05.08, lowering the Irish record. "Give me another three years and I'll do it," he said when asked then about the four-minute mile. He was after all only 20, but already no one in Ireland could touch him in the mile.
Another winter under Jumbo Elliott's coaching at Villanova brought considerable progress and a more streamlined stride. When freed from the pressures of exams he headed for California, where the mile, said Elliott, was the only distance to run. In that frame of mind he entered the Compton College stadium on the evening of June 1st.
"I certainly wasn't on a quest to run the four-minute mile," he says. "I was just excited and looking forward to racing again after my exams, which I'd taken very seriously. I knew it was a fine field assembled that night, but as always my only thoughts were about winning."
The organisers though wanted a fast mile and two US Army men were sent out to set the pace. Delany had been advised to stay close, but only around the last bend finally challenged the leader, Gunnar Nielsen of Denmark. That meant a race, and Delany went all out for the win.
"When I crossed the line my first thoughts were that I had won. By then, of course, all the time-keepers were getting quite excited, but I'd no idea why. There wasn't any electronic timing then, so watches had to be compared. Once the time was announced I was obviously delighted.
"But the truth is I never once ran for a time, never even thought about the watch. I was always a racer and would only run to win. So my only concern that day was beating the American Bobbie Seaman and Nielsen, who were both great runners at the time."
Delany's time was announced as 3:59.0. Nielsen was given 3:59.1. Together they became only the seventh and eighth men to run the four-minute mile, over two years after Bannister's breakthrough at Oxford. Delany was still just 21.
"For me anyway the psychological barrier associated with the four-minute mile was disappearing by then. I still think that Bannister's effort wasn't so much a physical drain as it was a psychological drain."
If the physical cost in Delany's effort appears minimal, there was a financial one. He'd arrived in Compton needing a new pair of running spikes and figured he could soften the local shoe salesman into loaning him a pair. But the man wanted $13 and the best Delaney could do was to agree on $10.
"I'd also been told that these adidas shoes were the only ones to wear. Back then, of course, everything was so strictly amateur that I could never have accepted a pair of shoes. I thought I might get away with borrowing them.
"Marketing meant nothing back then either and it was absolutely no use to the salesman to say someone had run the four-minute mile in a pair of his shoes. So I had to give him those $10, all the money I had. Once word got back to Ireland that I'd run under four minutes various newspapers were on to me, and, of course, I mentioned the shoes. And they all loved that. Most of the headlines said my four-minute mile had cost me my last $10."
By the end of the year it all proved good value. Delany lost a couple of big mile races at home that summer, but still went to Melbourne in December with the confidence of being able to mix it with any of the world's four-minute milers, by then numbering 10, six of which were in the Olympics. And times mean nothing in an Olympic final. It's purely that desire to win, which by then only Delany had perfected.
The successors
1964-1973
In the two years after winning his Olympic title, Delany would only twice more achieve the four-minute mile - on both occasions in world-record races.
In July, 1957, England's Derek Ibbotson ran 3:57.2 in London's White City to break Landy's world record, and Delany was second in 3:58.8.
In August, 1958, he was home in Dublin for one the greatest miles ever assembled, where Australia's Herb Elliott improved Ibbotson's record to 3:54.5. Delany was third in 3:57.5.
"That to me was when the mile race entered its next era, the modern era if you like. Before that, the top milers like myself would never do more than 40 or 50 miles a week, but Elliott would have doubled that, and was so much more strength based."
In just two years the mile had moved on from Delany and his contemporaries. But Ireland's next four-minute miler was a long time coming, and came in the unlikely form of Basil Clifford.
Though first shining in the Irish Youths mile of 1957, Clifford - a native of Inchicore - seemed a long way from the refined talents of Delany. He worked for the Tony Farrell bakery in Blackrock and part of his training involved running up the steps of the shop with bags of flour on his back.
Clifford was running well in 1964, but that August only accepted an invitation to run the Emsley Carr mile in London after Tom O'Riordan pulled out with injury. John Whetton of England won as expected in 3:58.95, and Clifford surprised even himself by running 3:59.80.
Thus, over eight years after Delany, he became only the second Irish athlete to run the four-minute mile. Later, he worked in a gun factory in Birmingham, where a tragic explosion in 1973 ended his life.
The third man, Derek Graham, was a more established miler and in August 1966 ran 3:59.40, later representing Britain. Only after Frank Murphy in 1968 and John Hartnett in 1973 - two more of the Villanova milers - did the Irish four-minute mile club accept a more open policy.
The record breakers
1975-1983
In May 1975 Eamonn Coghlan invited his father, Bill, to visit him at Villanova. That happened to coincide with a mile race in Pittsburgh and Coghlan figured the perfect way to impress his father was to run under four minutes. He'd run a 1,600-metre relay split well under that time a few weeks before and knew he was ready.
"Then we had this fight," says Coghlan, "a meaningless tiff over nothing. And I decided to disappear and forget about my father and this mile. Luckily, we sorted that out in time to go to Pittsburgh, and I ended up winning in 3:56.2. And it didn't hurt at all.
"Because of that, I was invited down to Kingston in Jamaica the following weekend, where Filbert Bayi of Tanzania was going for the world record, which he got by running 3:51.0. I managed to get third in 3:53.3, which I only discovered that night in the bar was a European record.
"And that one did hurt. It was one of the few times I felt my legs totally buckling under me in the last 100 metres."
Within a single week Coghlan had joined the elite milers of the world, but it was another eight years before he achieved his greatest goal - the 3:49.78 world indoor mile record on February 27th, 1983. That he did it indoors was to him only fitting.
He often recalls the time they first built the old 200-metre wooden track behind the football field at Villanova. One evening he sneaked in before it was finished and developed a rhythm that was to come so naturally throughout his career.
"I just loved the feeling of the indoor track, the tight bends and the close space. I felt like a little racing car going around. And put that somewhere like Madison Square Garden where you also get the crowd and to me it was just like putting on a show.
"It's true that outdoors I wouldn't have got that same sort of buzz. It just felt so much more open. As a result, I probably did put more of a focus on indoor running."
Coghlan travelled to the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey that Sunday night in 1983 with only one thing on his mind. The passing of his old coaches Jumbo Elliott and Gerry Farnan and his father Bill in the period before had provided the final motivation. He was going to be the first man under 3:50 indoors.
"Then the original meeting was cancelled because of a snow storm. Normally, the US championships on the last Friday of February was the last meeting of the season, but the organiser agreed to stage the Meadowlands meeting that Sunday if I was so sure of running sub-3:50. It went out live on TV between the featured NBA game, but I had all my splits worked out and I knew I would do it. It took an effort of course to win that race, but it wasn't like I'd broken any pain barrier."
As it turned out, the man chasing Coghlan to the line that day was Ray Flynn, who the summer before in Oslo had improved the Irish outdoor record to 3:49.77. A native of Longford, Flynn joined the four-minute-mile club at the Penn Relays on the last day of April 1977.
"I have very vivid memories of that day," says Flynn, "partly because I'd got some kind of food poisoning the day before, and I was quite sick going into that race. I know I'd taken Epsom salts the night before and I didn't think I'd even be able to get to the start line. As it turned out, it was won in 3:54 or something and I was disappointed not to run a little faster. Of course, it was a big thrill to break four minutes for the first time, but it did come fairly easy."
Flynn had aspired to being a world-class miler long before, having won both the Irish and English schools mile before he took the US scholarship route to Tennessee. He looks back now on the summer of 1982 and knows he was part of the golden era for milers.
"One of the main reasons I ran so fast was from racing so much at that level. And that's what it's all about. The more races you get at that level the faster you start believing you can go. And I always thought secretly that I was going to break 3:50 that day."
Just two weeks before the 3:49 he'd run 3:50.54, also in Oslo. That night of July 7th he took the lead at the bell, and was passed by Steve Scott with 300 metres to go. At the finish Scott marginally missed the world record, running 3:47.69. It went down as Scott's greatest missed chance of real glory.
John Walker set a New Zealand record of 3:49.08 in second, and in third Flynn improved his own Irish record to 3:49.77.
"Now that was hard, and I was quite ill afterwards. I recall sitting on the side of the track for 10 or 15 minutes and not being too coherent. But I never once thought the record would last that long, and it's still a surprise to me that it still stands.
"Especially with the rate of good runners Ireland was producing at the time. These days we're not producing the same kind of runners, mostly because of lifestyle changes, so who knows how much longer it will last?
"And when I was second to Coghlan in that indoor race a year later, I was the only one listening so closely to his time, even though indoors and outdoors are so different. The fact that my time was still that 100th of a second faster meant a lot to me."
In the three years of 1981-1983, Flynn ran in total 44 four-minute miles. By the indoor season of 1990 he'd run 89, but then injuries finally got the better of him. So the honour of becoming the first Irishman to run 100 four-minute miles - and one of only three men in history - fell to Marcus O'Sullivan.
First, he had to break through the barrier - achieved on January 22nd, 1983, down in Chapel Hill, North Carolina - on one of the slowest indoor tracks in America.
"What I remember most about that race was being totally thrilled with the time, and then throwing up soon afterwards. But to me it meant an awful lot. I'd grown up with the four-minute mile still holding so much magic so to actually do it was a big deal."
Now head coach at his old alma mater of Villanova, O'Sullivan was soon running four-minute miles like clockwork. But, by 1994, he found his old motivation waning and he considered retirement.
"I mentioned this to Kim McDonald and he said I was mad. First of all because I was making too much money. Just then people were making a big deal about Steve Scott and John Walker achieving 100 four-minute miles. There were still legends to me, athletes I still look up to, and the chance to equal something only they'd achieved really inspired me."
With a more diligent approach to his training, O'Sullivan racked up 24 four-minute miles between 1995 and 1997, and set himself up perfectly for the glorious crowning of his 100th four-minute mile at Madison Square Garden in February 1998.
The Irish supremacy
August 17th, 1985
With such a talented team of Irish milers on the scene it was inevitable that someone like John O'Shea of GOAL would think of the widerbenefits. He wanted the dream team of Coghlan, Flynn, O'Sullivan and Frank O'Mara to attack the world record in the four-mile relay, and set up the perfect stage at the Belfield track in Dublin.
"I remember John getting on to me about running," says Coghlan, "and I told him no way, that I hadn't done a track session in six months because of injury. I knew I was in no shape to run the mile and just the night before we had a real blow-out over it. I think he actually called me a waster. That's how mad we both were.
"Then that morning Noel Carroll called up, partly to apologise to John. Somehow, he managed to convince me to give it a go and I ended up winning the first leg bang on four minutes. Noel always claimed after that it was the best mile I ever ran."
Inspired by Coghlan, the team went on to clock 15:49.99, anchored by Flynn, thus establishing the world record. To this day, one of the few pictures Flynn has on the wall of his athletics agency office in Tennessee is of that team.
"I know even I was pushing not to have Coghlan on the team," says Flynn. "A week or so before we'd raced together in a road mile over in Minneapolis, and Eamonn had run 4:22. So he was really in bad shape. Terrible shape. The other guys mightn't admit to it, but we were all trying to push him off our team. We just didn't think we'd break the record with him on board.
"But Eamonn was such a competitor that he was able to produce that mile almost naturally, even in his worst possible condition, helped by the fact that John Treacy was on the B-team and chasing him down. Now I'm so happy that he was part of it, and gave the whole thing so much more credibility."
The next generation
Another 50 years
That the standard of Irish milers is now in decline is universally accepted. The last time any performance made headlines was in February 1994 when Coghlan, three months past his 41st birthday, won a low-key indoor race at the Harvard track in Boston. His time was 3:58.15, making him the first four-minute miler in the world past the age of 40.
"That achievement is very special to me," says Coghlan. "There's no doubt I'd felt a bit of a void there when I'd first retired, that I just wasn't as self-fulfilled as I should have been. And there's no doubt not winning an Olympic medal had something to do with that.
"There were a few people trying to break that barrier at the time, such as Walker and Scott as well as Dave Moorcroft. I figured I'd give it a go, use it as some new motivation to give my career the ending that I felt it needed."
But it's not just the standard of the mile that's in decline, it's also interest around the world. The US indoor circuit is at its lowest in well over 50 years and so many great races like the Dream Mile and the Golden Mile have become predictable processions for the Africans. Even in US colleges, the mile is almost totally replaced by the 1,500 metres.
"It's sad that the mile is not raced so much anymore," says Flynn. "In our time, we could run two or three in a week. I remember once running three in four days. Those opportunities aren't there anymore and I think that has skewed the statistics. It wasn't that we were all that much better."
It's seems impossible, though, that the first 50 years of Irish milers will be ever be rivalled.
But they've left behind a legacy worthy of its time.
(Including Northern Ireland athletes subsequently representing Britain and those declaring for Ireland)
(Subsequent personal best in brackets, i = indoors)
Jun 1st, '56 Ronnie Delany3:59.0 (3:57.5, '58)
Aug 3rd, '64 Basil Clifford3:59.80
Aug 13th, '66 Derek Graham3:59.40 (3:59.26, '66)
Jun 1st, '68 Frank Murphy3:58.6 (3:58.1, '69)
May 12th, '73 John Hartnett3:58.3 (3:54.7, '73)
May 10th, '75 Eamonn Coghlan3:56.2 (3:49.78i, '83)
Aug 30th, '75 Jim McGuinness3:59.2 (3:55.0, '77)
May 1st, '76 Niall O'Shaughnessy3:58.1 (3:55.4i, '77)
Jun 19th, '76 Paul Lawther3:58.49 (3:57.81, '83)
Jun 19th, '76 Jerry Kiernan3:59.12
Apr 30th, '77 Ray Flynn3:59.4 (3:49.77, '82)
Jun 24th, '80 David Taylor3:59.19 (3:54.48, '83)
Jun 23rd, '81 Frank O'Mara3:58.82 (3:51.06, '86)
Jan 22nd, '83 Marcus O'Sullivan3:58.84i (3:50.94i, '88)
Jul 13th, '83 Tommy Moloney3:57.70 (3:54.68, '86)
Jun 10th, '84 Steve Martin3:56.71 (3:56.36, '86)
Jul 3rd, '84 Paul Donovan3:55.82
Jul 9th, '85 Enda Fitzpatrick3:56.36
Jun 14th, '86 Gerry O'Reilly3:54.63
Jul 8th, '86 Eugene Curran3:58.54
Jul 13th, '86 Mark Kirk3:59.67
Jul 18th, '86 Peter McColgan3:59.37
Jul 7th, '87 Seán O'Neill3:58.42
Jan 31st, '88 Frank Conway3:58.32i (3:56.78i, '89)
Feb 6th, '88 Kieran Stack3:59.4i
Jul 5th, '88 Séamus McCann3:59.84
May 30th, '91 Davey Wilson3:59.9
Jul 5th, '91 Niall Bruton3:59.23 (3:53.93, '96)
Jul 9th, '93 Mark Carroll3:58.64 (3:50.62, '00)
Jun 25th, '94 Des English3:58.71
Jun 25th, '94 Shane Healy3:59.23
Sep 4th, '94 Gary Lough3:59.48 (3:55.91, '95)
Apr 1st, '95 Ken Nason3:58.91 (3:58.09, '95)
Sep 5th, '98 James McIlroy3:59.48
Jun 27th, '99 James Nolan3:56.31 (3:54.62, '03)
Aug 7th, '99 Brian Treacy3:59.91
Apr 29th, '00 Gareth Turnbull3:57.89 (3:57.61, '02)
Oct 29th, '00 Andrew Walker3:58.96
Mar 2nd, '03 Alistair Cragg3:59.94i
Ireland's 39 four-minute milers
Since the IAAF records began there have been 32 official world mile records, starting in 1913 when John Paul Jones of the US ran 4:14.4 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since Roger Bannister's four-minute mile in 1954, the world record has been lowered a further 18 times by just 13 different athletes - to the current mark of 3:43.13 set by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco in Rome on July 7th, 1999.
The fastest debut four-minute mile by an Irish athlete was run by Gerry O'Reilly, another graduate of Villanova, when clocking 3:54.63 on June 14th, 1986. It turned out to be the fastest mile of his career.
On July 19th, 1997, the Kenyan distance runner Daniel Komen ran 7:58.61 at a two-mile race in Hechtel, Belgium. Over 43 years after Roger Bannister's four-minute-mile breakthrough, Komen became the first man to run back-to-back four-minute miles.
Of the 39 Irish athletes that have run the four-minute mile, almost half of them, 18, only broke the barrier on one occasion.
There are four Irish milers in the top-10 list of all-time world indoor performances: Eamonn Coghlan (2nd, 3:49.78), Marcus O'Sullivan (4th, 3:50.70), Ray Flynn (5th, 3:51.20), and Frank O'Mara (9th, 3:52.30). The world record is held by Hicham El Guerrouj (3:48.45).
The fastest ever mile run by an Irish woman was the 4:17.25 set by Sonia O'Sullivan in Oslo in July of 1994. Only four women in the world have run faster, including world record holder Svetlana Masterkova of Russia (4:12.56, August 1996).
The most four-minute miles run in the one career is the 137 achieved by Steve Scott of the USA. John Walker of New Zealand is next best with 127, with Marcus O'Sullivan third with 101.
Mile-stones
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