Today it is as hard to keep up with Sir Roger Bannister's mind as it once was to keep up with his feet. With the offer of tea and biscuits out of the way, Sir Roger, 82, sits down at the table in the living room of his Oxford flat, takes up his pencil and legal pad and begins his interview.
"And what's your Christian name?" he asks, in perhaps another of his historical firsts, given that he is soliciting this information from a David Epstein of Brooklyn.
"There isn't much about [track and field] in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED anymore, is there?" Nope. (Sir Roger was SI's first Sportsman of the Year, in 1954, in honor of which he was given a replica of an ancient Greek amphora. He later covered track and field at the '56 Melbourne Olympics for the magazine.) "And do they do random drug testing between seasons in baseball?" Sort of. (When he was head of the British Sports Council, from 1971 to '74, Bannister oversaw the development of the first urine test for steroids.) "And is the penalty suspension for five years or life?" Definitely neither. "Well," he concludes, looking on the bright side after collecting further updates on BALCO and Roger Clemens, "it's difficult to believe that Usain Bolt has ever been involved in drugs. He's such a magnificent athlete.
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