Sixty years ago today, Roger Bannister became the first man to run faster than four minutes for the mile. Yes, it was great (as all world records are). But why is it still celebrated six decades later when there are countless other athletics performances that are far superior?
I wish I knew. I’ve blogged about this before, but no one has yet been able to give me a good answer.
I’m not going to go on about it again, but to try to put a 3:59.99 mile in perspective, I’ve compared it to performances in other athletics events by using the IAAF scoring tables.
Compiled by the esteemed father-and-son statistician duo Bojidar and Attila Spiriev, a vast amount of historical data has been analysed in order to create the IAAF scoring tables, which offers a points system with which to compare performances across different athletics events.
A 3:59.99 mile is worth 1075 points on the IAAF scoring tables, which translates to the following performances in all of the other standard individual athletics events:
Event | Mark | Year, athlete | Mark | Year, athlete |
---|---|---|---|---|
100m | 10.40 | 1932, Eddie Tolan | 11.59 | 1952, Marjorie Jackson |
200m | 20.95 | 1936, Jesse Owens | 23.60 | 1952, Marjorie Jackson |
400m | 46.55 | 1932, Bill Carr | 53.35 | 1962, Shin Geum-Dan |
800m | 1:48.31 | 1939, Rudolf Harbig | 2:04.50 | 1960, Lyudmila Shevtsova |
1500m | 3:42.39 | 1954, John Landy | 4:16.76 | 1967, Maria Gommers |
Mile | 3:59.99 | 1954, Roger Bannister | 4:36.23 | 1971, Ellen Tittel |
3000m | 7:56.81 | 1955, Sandor Iharos | 9:09.31 | 1972, Paola Pigni |
5000m | 13:37.93 | 1956, Gordon Pirie | 15:46.55 | 1977, Natalia Marasescu |
10,000m | 28:37.68 | 1956, Vladimir Kuts | 33:14.16 | 1978, Natalia Marasescu |
Half marathon | 1:02:53 | 1977, Toshihiro Matsumoto | 1:13:01 | 1981, Joan Benoit |
Marathon | 2:14:57 | 1963, Leonard Edelen | 2:35:58 | 1977, Chantal Langlace |
3000m steeplechase | 8:40.92 | 1956, Semyon Rzhishchin | 10:08.58 | 1998, Daniela Petrescu |
110m/100m hurdles | 13.95 | 1936, Forrest Towns | 13.56 | 1969, Pamela Kilborn |
400m hurdles | 51.12 | 1934, Glenn Hardin | 58.20 | 1973, Maria Sykora |
High jump | 2.18 | 1960, John Thomas | 1.86 | 1960, Iolanda Balas |
Pole vault | 5.30 | 1966, Bob Seagren | 4.40 | 1996, Emma George |
Long jump | 7.71 | 1924, Robert LeGendre | 6.40 | 1960, Hildrun Claus |
Triple jump | 16.16 | 1952, Adhemar da Silva | 13.73 | 1987, Flora Hyacinth |
Shot put | 19.23 | 1956, Parry O'Brien | 18.35 | 1962, Tamara Press |
Discus | 60.77 | 1962, Al Oerter | 60.17 | 1967, Liesel Westermann |
Hammer | 72.87 | 1965, Gyula Zsivotzky | 68.85 | 1996, Mihaela Melinte |
Javelin | 78.68 | 1938, Yrjo Nikkanen | 60.95 | 1964, Yelena Gorchakova |
Decathlon / heptathlon | 7710 | 1958, Rafer Johnson | 5998 | 1980, Yekaterina Gordiyenko |
For reference, I have also included the year in which that performance was first achieved or succeeded and the athlete who accomplished it. It helps to show which athletes were truly ahead of their time, with long jumper Robert LeGendre being the first athlete to achieve a 1075pt score on the IAAF scoring tables with his 7.71m world record from 1924, some 30 years before Bannister’s mile world record.
The thing that puzzles me most about the sub-four-minute mile is: how come we don’t celebrate the breaking of all the other arbitrary landmark performances in athletics? So, for fairness sake, I have compiled a calendar to highlight a bunch of significant marks from the other athletics events (all of which are intrinsically superior to a 3:59.99 mile, for whatever it’s worth).
The calendar of arbitrary athletics barriers
February
3 – The first sub-1:45 800m (Peter Snell)
April
2 – The first sub-60:00 half marathon (Moses Tanui)
May
1 – The first 70.00m discus throw (Jay Silvester)
9 – The first sub-50.00 400m (Christina Brehmer)
15 – The first sub-1:10:00 half marathon (Grete Waitz)
18 – The first 8000pt decathlon (Vasiliy Kuznetsov)
25 – The first 8.00m long jump (Jesse Owens)
June
10 – The first sub-22.00 200m (Marita Koch)
21 – The first sub-10:00 steeplechase (Daniela Petrescu)
22 – The first 70.00m hammer throw (Olga Kuzenkova)
28 – The first sub-4:00 1500m (Tatyana Kazankina). The first sub-15:00 5000m (Ingrid Kristiansen)
July
1 – The first sub-11.00 100m (Marlie Gohr)
6 – The first sub-9:00 3000m (Lyudmila Bragina)
9 – The first 80.00m hammer throw (Boris Zaychuk)
11 – The first 2.30m high jump (Dwight Stones). The first sub-2:00 800m (Hildegard Falck)
12 – The first sub-13.00 100m hurdles (Chi Cheng). The first 70.00m javelin throw (Tatyana Biryulina)
13 – The first 6000pt heptathlon (Nina Golovina). The first 6.00m pole vault (Sergey Bubka). The first 20.00m shot put (Nadezhda Chizhova)
14 – The first sub-28:00 10,000m (Ron Clarke)
16 – The first sub-3:30 1500m (Steve Cram). The first sub-32:00 10,000m (Mary Tabb)
22 – The first sub-13:00 5000m (Said Aouita). The first 5.00m pole vault (Yelena Isinbayeva)
August
5 – The first 17.00m triple jump (Jozef Schmidt)
8 – The first sub-4:30 mile (Paola Cacchi)
12 – The first 20.00m shot put (Bill Neider)
16 – The first sub-8:00 steeplechase (Moses Kiptanui)
18 – The first 7.00m long jump (Vilma Bardauskiene)
19 – The first sub-13.00 110m hurdles (Renaldo Nehemiah)
20 – The first sub-7:30 3000m (Said Aouita). The first 70.00m discus throw (Faina Melnik)
21 – The first 15.00m triple jump (Anna Biryukova)
26 – The first 2.00m high jump (Rosemarie Ackerman)
September
2 – The first sub-48.00 400m hurdles (John Akii-Bua). The first 90.00m javelin throw (Terje Pedersen). The first sub-55.00 400m hurdles (Tatyana Zelentsova)
6 – The first sub-45.00 400m (Otis Davis)
October
14 – The first sub-10.00 100m (Jim Hines)
16 – The first sub-20.00 200m (Tommie Smith)
21 – The first sub-2:30 marathon (Grete Waitz)
December
3 – The first sub-2:10 marathon (Derek Clayton)