First woman to run mile in under five minutes

Diane Leather

Born: January 7th, 1933

Died: September 6th, 2018

Diane Leather, who was the first woman recorded to have run a mile in under five minutes but whose feat – like women’s distance running in general at the time – was not recognised by the track and field establishment, died September 6th in Truro, Cornwall. She was 85.

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The cause was a stroke, her son, Matthew Charles, said.

Leather was working as a chemist at Birmingham University in 1952 when she saw a television broadcast of the women’s 100m and 200m track events at the Helsinki Olympics.

"I thought I'd love to do that," she told the Great Barr Observer, a newspaper in Birmingham, in 2014.

She joined a local running group called the Birchfield Harriers, whose coach, admiring her speed, encouraged her to try longer distances. Soon, the goal of breaking five minutes became “something of a holy grail for her”, her husband, Peter Charles, said in a written account of her career.

Leather wasn’t the only one with that goal: the race for a woman to break the five-minute mile was fierce, despite the lack of official recognition.

In September 1953, Anne Oliver of Britain finished in 5:08.0, a record. Later that month, Leather beat that time with 5:02.6. Two months later it was Edith Treybal, from Romania, with 5:00.3. On May 26th, 1954, Leather surpassed that mark by a hair, finishing at 5:00.2.

Birmingham meet

Three days later, on May 29th, 1954, in a meet at Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, Leather was ready to make another attempt. With the starter’s gun echoing across the track, she jetted ahead of the pack.

“I was really on my own,” she recalled later. “There were no pacemakers or anything.”

With a final surge, she broke the tape at 4:59.6.

“Oh, good,” she said matter of factly when she was told her time. “At last.”

The New York Times hailed her achievement, describing her as a 5'10" "good-looking laboratory analyst".

“A five-minute mile in women’s track and field has been looked upon as the sport’s greatest goal,” the newspaper said.

She set her record 23 days after another Briton, Roger Bannister, broke the four-minute mile for men. But, unlike Bannister, who died in March, Leather would not find a place in the world record books.

At the time, the sport’s governing body, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), did not keep track of women’s distances greater than 800m.

That policy originated with an incident at the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928, when a women’s 800m event was included in the games for the first time. Six women collapsed on crossing the finish line, setting off an outcry.

The distance, the New York Times said, was "too great a call on feminine strength". The Daily Mail quoted doctors as saying that such "feats of endurance" would cause women to "become old too soon".

The women’s 800m Olympic event was discontinued and not reinstated until 1960, in Rome. Until then the longest race in which women could compete was 200m.

In 1955, Leather twice improved her own time, finishing in 4:50.8 in May and in 4:45.0 in September. She held the unofficial record for seven years.

She also broke world records for women in the 800m and 880-yard relay events. And she twice won silver medals in the 800m event at the European championships.

Diane Susan Leather was born on January 7th, 1933, in Streetly, Staffordshire, England, to James Bertrand Leather, a surgeon, and Mabel Winifred (Barringer) Leather. She had five brothers.

She married Charles in 1959. At the 1960 Rome Olympics she ran in a preliminary heat in the 800 but did not advance. She retired from competitive running that year, at 27, and had her first child in 1961.

Social work

She later earned a college degree in social work and was employed for many years at Cruse Bereavement Care, a non-profit agency in Cornwall.

Her husband died in 2017. In addition to her son Matthew, Leather is survived by two other sons, Hamish and Rufus; a daughter, Lindsey; three brothers; and 13 grandchildren.

It wasn’t until 1967 that the IAAF recognised the women’s mile as a competitive event. The record went to Anne Rosemary Smith, who finished that June in 4:37.0. The women’s current mile record is 4:12.56, set by Svetlana Masterkova of Russia in 1996.

Leather was inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2014, a trophy presented to the female winner of the annual Westminster Mile race was named in her honour.

When asked if she had ever resented not being officially recognised as a world record-holder for the mile, she told the Birmingham Post and Mail in 2004, "There is no way.

"It was something I accepted," she said. – New York Times service