On Sunday morning, the running community awoke to the news that Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to break the four-minute mile barrier, passed away peacefully at the age of 88 in Oxford, the same city that propelled him to fame nearly 64 years ago when he displayed that limits are just a creation in our minds.
Bannister's legend was born on May 6, 1954, when he took to the Iffley Road cinder track at Oxford despite unfavorable weather conditions and became the first man to run a mile in under four minutes—a feat many deemed impossible and possibly deadly, much like climbing Mt. Everest. Yet the 1953 summit of Everest by Edmund Hillary and coronation of Queen Elizabeth II were two of the events leading up to Bannister’s magical run that revived Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II.
