Miles And Miles

There was a time when the biggest quest in sports involved nothing more than a human being and a stopwatch.

Would a person ever run a sub-four-minute mile? If you're a little older than TigerBlog, then you know who Roger Bannister was. If you don't, he was the first to accomplish the feat.

It wasn't until May 6, 1954, that Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes. This is from a story TigerBlog found about the occasion:

The stadium announcer for the race was Norris McWhirter, who who went on to co-publish and co-edit the Guinness Book of World Records. He teased the crowd by delaying his announcement of Bannister's race time for as long as possible:

Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event nine, the one mile: first, number forty one, R. G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which—subject to ratification—will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire and World Record. The time was three...

The roar of the crowd drowned out the rest of the announcement. Bannister's time was 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.

Only 11 years earlier, Princeton figured quite prominently in the mile record, as New Zealand's Jack Lovelock defeated Princeton's own Bill Bonthron in a race at Palmer Stadium in which both bettered the existing world record, Lovelock in 4:07.6 and Bonthron in 4:08.7.

Bonthron would again beat the old mile record in a race at Palmer Stadium on June 16, 1934, when Glenn Cunningham ran a 4:06.7. That was 10 years before the record run by Bannister, whose running career ended when he became a neurologist instead.

There has always been something very special about a four-minute mile. Princeton's Bill Burke, from Burke, Va., ran a 3:58.70 at the 1991 Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden. 

That was back on a Friday night. The following evening, TigerBlog interviewed Burke at halftime of a Princeton men's basketball game when TB was doing radio — and when the media section at Jadwin was on the bench side, in the center section. That was a long time ago.

TigerBlog was pretty new to interviewing people on the radio in 1991. He wonders what his questions were and what Burke had to say about such a huge running accomplishment, one that was still a very big deal back in 1991.

What he does remember about the interview was that there was a feeling of awe around what Burke had done. A four-minute mile? 

Burke, by the way, shared the 1991 Roper Trophy with men's basketball player Kit Mueller. It's always good to get a shoutout for Kit. 

Princeton recently had another four-minute miler, and again, it'll always be a special accomplishment. This time it was Harrison Witt, who broke his own Princeton and Ivy League record by going 3:52.87 at Boston University. His old record was 3:56.12, or more than three seconds faster. 

To give you a sense of how far the ability to run has come, Princeton had three athletes who broke four minutes in the BU mile, with Connor McCormick at 3:56.40 and Collin Boler at 3:59.07.

The mile isn't the marquee event that it used to be, but it still exists. In fact, it is the only non-metric event that the IAAF recognizes for world record purposes. 

To that end, no woman has ever run a sub-four-minute mile. The women's world record is 4:07.64, set on July 21, 2023, by Kenyan Faith Kipyegon, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in, what else, the 1,500 meters. 

Princeton's Mena Sctchard broke her own program mile record with a 4:28.43, more than four seconds off her own previous program record, set earlier this winter. 

Speaking of track and field records, there was also the men's 4x400 relay at the Tyson Invitational in Fayetteville, Arkansas, this past weekend. Princeton's team of Jon York, Joey Gant, Karl Dietz and Xavier Donaldson ran a 3:07.16, which added up to a new program record as well, beating the old record of 3:08.14, set by Gant, Jackson Clarke, Dietz and Donaldson earlier this winter as well.

Peter Hessler was a teammate of Burke's at Princeton who went on to be a Rhodes Scholar. He recently emailed TigerBlog about something else and mentioned that he see Burke somewhat regularly and that "he still looks like a miler." 

That's a good thing to look like in your mid-50s, no?