Sub-four fever as the ultimate milestone approaches

Oxford is the place to be next Monday when the 70th anniversary of Roger Bannister’s iconic 3:59.4 is celebrated

Monday May 6 marks one of the most important anniversaries in the sport. It will be 70 years since Roger Bannister became the first man to break the four-minute barrier for the mile. Keen to mark the occasion, Oxford University is staging a day-long celebration with a community mile in the centre of the city and track races at the same Iffley Road venue where Bannister created history in 1954.

I hear the organisers are pulling out all the stops to attract the supermilers from around the world to attend. Given this, I’ve had it marked in my diary for months as one of the unmissable events of 2024.

Following the community mile in the morning, the afternoon series of races will feature competitions for young athletes, masters and para-athletes, there is a novel ‘steeplechase mile’ which is guaranteed to produce records, whereas the meeting culminates with elite mile races which are due to start at 6pm – exactly the same time Bannister began his race 70 years earlier.

World Athletics is supporting the meeting by showcasing some priceless historical items in a pop-up museum. The global governing body will also present two of its Heritage Plaques to mark the importance of the venue and occasion before a number of guests go to a formal dinner at Exeter College to wrap up the day. Certainly, if you were not lucky (and old) enough to be standing at Iffley Road in 1954 with a duffel coat and cigar, the anniversary event on Monday is the next best thing.

It promises to be as good as the 50^th anniversary event at Iffley Road in 2004. Back then, Craig Mottram of Australia and Sonia O’Sullivan of Ireland won the elite mile races in 3:56.64 and 4:27.79 respectively with Bannister, who sadly died in 2018, on hand to watch the action.

On May 6, 2004, we brought out a “sub-four special” issue of AW to mark the 50^th anniversary where, among other things, we ran a feature on our predicted ‘supermiler of the future’, a certain Farah, seven years before he won his first global track title, albeit at 5000m.

The issue also contained one of AW’s final big interviews with Bannister. After hearing he didn’t suffer fools, I arrived at his flat in Kensington, west London, with a degree of trepidation but he could not have been friendlier or more welcoming during a 90-minute interview. The…