![]() “I knew then that everything had gone as planned,” Bannister said. But I must stay with the plan.”Ĭhataway reached the three-quarter mark in 3:00.5, Bannister right behind him, and the crowd began to sense that this might be a special race on a special day. “I was running with the maximum smoothness and economy and at any time I could go by Chataway. “I now was trying to run right behind Chataway, as I did with Brasher,” Bannister said. “So we went around the first bend and somewhere down the back, I began yelling to him, ‘Faster! Faster!' and luckily he kept his cool for he knew what a first lap should be.”īrasher maintained the pace, finishing the second lap in 1:58 flat, and the crowd of about 1,000 began to stir.Ĭhataway passed both Bannister and Brasher on the third lap. I was so full of running and so impatient that I couldn't believe was going fast enough,” Bannister later recalled. ![]() Brasher took the lead, Bannister tucking in behind him, and finished the first lap in 57.5 seconds. “I felt angry, that precious moments during the lull in the wind might be slipping by,” he wrote in his book, “The Four Minute Mile.”Īfter the restart, though, the six-runner race unfolded as planned. ![]() The plan was for Brasher to set the pace for the first 2½ laps over the quarter-mile track, ideally running the half-mile in less than two minutes, then for Chataway to take the lead on the third lap and hit the three-quarter mark at about three minutes, then for Bannister to move into the lead with three-quarters of a lap to go and count on his strong finishing kick.Ī false start, which almost never happens in distance races, irked Bannister. “When I noticed that the wind had settled the flag, I talked to myself and realized that I must do it.” “It's amazing that one can be indecisive up to the point of decision,” Bannister told The Times in 1994. A shower ended just about that time and the wind slackened, Bannister noticing that a flag on a nearby church steeple was hanging limp. At that, though, Bannister chose to postpone his decision until 5 p.m., an hour before the start of the race.
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