For many, running is about redefining the word impossible, breaking through the barriers of the human mind, body and spirit. No one encompassed this more than Sir Roger Bannister, the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.
Bannister also won a gold over the same distance at the 1954 Commonwealth Games, and later became a respected neurologist. However, he was – and is – forever linked to three minutes and 59.4 seconds, the so-called “impossible” barrier broken at Iffey Road in Oxford on May 6, 1954.
Some of our favorite quotes from the legend, Sir Roger Bannister:
“I found longer races boring. I found the mile just perfect.”
“The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.”
“It stood there as something that was waiting to be done, and I was in the right place at the right time and was ready to do it. My attitude was that it can be done, and it will be done soon, and I’d rather it were done here.”
“We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves…The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, ‘You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.’ The human spirit is indomitable.”
“Just because they say it’s impossible doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”
“The reason sport is attractive to many of the general public is that it’s filled with reversals. What you think may happen doesn’t happen. A champion is beaten, an unknown becomes a champion.”
“However ordinary each of us may seem, we are all in some way special, and can do things that are extraordinary, perhaps until then…even thought impossible.”
“It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ.”
