Barleycorn, Bannister, Barriers and Beyond
Posted March 29th, 2008 at 8:00 AM by Jimmie R. Markham
Section: News & Results, Track & Field
Or, How I learned To Live Without New Mile World Records
Between July 17th, 1945 and May 6th, 1954 a period of 3,215 days or 8 years, 9 months, 20 days passed. What’s so significant about that time period? Well, the track historians among you might recognize the latter date as one of considerable historical significance for our sport, for humanity, really. That was the date on which Great Britain’s Roger Bannister ran himself into immortality by becoming the first man to break four minutes for the mile run. Bannister ran 3:59.6 that day, surpassing the world record of 4:01.3 that had stood for nearly a decade and was owned by Sweden’s Gunder Hägg.
That time period of 3,215 days is the longest passage of time between world records in the mile since the IAAF era began in 1912. That dubious record is about to be broken. That’s right, folks – on April 25th, 2008, 3,216 days will have passed since Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco set the current world record of 3:43.13 for the mile run on July 7th, 1999. Those of you who consider yourselves to be track historians realize the significance of this fact. Before Bannister was able to break through that four-minute barrier, track pundits had been postulating that man had reached the limits of his abilities, that the four-minute barrier was impenetrable. They argued that so much time had passed since the world record had been broken, it was obvious that it would never again be broken; in fact, some argued that those foolhardy enough to try would die in the process. (A great account of the lead-up to Bannister’s historic achievement can be read in Neal Bascomb’s terrific book entitled The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It.)
Here we are about to surpass the time period that allowed that kind of speculative (and oh, so laughably wrong-minded!) thinking to incubate. As I write these words, the fastest active miler in the world is Alan Webb of the United States. Web ran his personal best of 3:46.91 last year in Brasschaat, Belgium. Between the time of El Guerrouj’s record run and Webb’s PR, only two man have run faster than Webb in the mile. Noah Ngeny ran a 3:43.40 to finish 2nd in the same race as El Guerrouj’s record breaking mile. El Guerrouj himself ran a trio of miles in the 3:44 to 3:46 range in 200 and 2001. That’s it.
Of course all the action since then has been in the metric mile, the 1500m run. El Guerrouj ran a 3:26.00 on July 14th, 1998, a world record that still stands and is the equivalent of a 3:42.42 mile. On August 24th, 2001, El Guerrouj placed 1st in perhaps the greatest 1500m race in history and ran a 3:26.12, the equivalent of a 3:42.55 mile. Bernard Lagat, still a Kenyan citizen back then, ran a 3:26.34 in that same race and nearly out-kicked the surprised Moroccan in the process. His time was equivalent to a 3:42.79 mile. France’s Medhi Baala has run a 3:28.98 as recently as September 5th, 2003, a mile-equivalent of 3:45.64. A handful of active metric-milers have run faster than Webb’s PR of 3:30.54. Here’s the video of the El Guerrouj/Lagat race:
One other fact to take into consideration: the world has rejected Queen Elizabeth I’s imperial standard. The metric system has become so dominant that even the Queen’s own subjects have largely abandoned her imprecise measurement system that was based on the length of a barleycorn (3 barleycorns = 1 inch). The only three nations in the world that have not officially adopted the metric system are Liberia, Myanmar and the United States. It’s fitting, then, than an American carries the mile banner right now.
That means the mile run is becoming as extinct as a snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro on a hot summer’s day. Only 13 world-class mile races were run in 2007, compared to 23 in the 1500m run. The only thing that will keep it from ever disappearing entirely is the fact that it is still the “Blue Riband of athletics.” People don’t ask you if you have broken 3:42.29 in the 1500m (the equivalent of a 4:00 mile).
So what does all this mean in terms of my original point, that we are about to set a new record for the longest period of time having gone by without breaking the world record in the mile? I’m not sure there is any significance to this fact. Thanks to Jack Daniels, Ph.D., even the layman knows more now about exercise physiology than most scientists did in 1954. We’re not ready to accept that we’ve reached our limits in terms of running a mile in a certain amount of time. On the other hand, we can safely assume that no man will ever run a 2:36.75 (that’s how fast Asafa Powell would run a mile if he could sustain his current world record of 9.74 in the 100m dash for another 1509.344 meters), at least not in this century, or not without some medicinal “help.” So where is the real barrier for the mile, the one people in 1954 thought was at 4:00? Obviously, it’s somewhere in between 3:43.13 and that fictional Powell record of 2:36.75. I hope it’s closer to the latter than the former, but I suspect that the opposite is the case. What’s your opinion?
Sources: [Alltime-Athletics.com][Runner’s World][Wikipedia 1 | 2 | 3 | 4]
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Tags: Alan Webb, four minute mile, hicham el guerrouj, linits of human achievement, mile run, mile world record, roger=bannister, world record
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