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The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It
By
Neal Bascomb
Published in 2004
Featured book published by Houghton Mifflin Company
Hardcover: 336 pages
ISBN: 0618391126
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There was a time when running the mile in four minutes was believed to be entirely beyond the limits of human foot speed. And in all of sport it was the elusive holy grail. In 1952, after suffering defeat at the Helsinki Olympics, three world-class runners set out individually to break this formidable barrier. Roger Bannister was a young English medical student. John Landy was the privileged son of a genteel Australian family. Then there was Wes Santee, the swaggering American, a Kansas farm boy. In the tradition of Seabiscuit and Chariots of Fire, Neal Bascomb delivers a breathtaking story of unlikely heroes and leaves us with a lasting portrait of the twilight years of the golden age of sport.
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About Neal Bascomb
Neal Bascomb, a former editor and journalist has appeared in documentaries on A&E and the History Channel. He has also written for the New York Times. A native of St. Louis, Bascomb now lives in New York.
Selected Works by Neal Bascomb
- The Perfect Mile
- Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky
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From The New Yorker
On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister, a British medical student who squeezed in track workouts between hospital rounds, became the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. It was a feat that had widely been thought impossible, but within seven weeks an even faster time was posted by the Australian John Landy, setting up a showdown later that year in a race that was billed as the “Mile of the Century.” In masterly fashion, Bascomb re-creates the battle of the milers, embellishing his account with fascinating forays into runner’s lore. (In the seventeenth century, athletes had their spleens excised to boost speed; in the nineteenth, they were advised to rest in bed at noon naked.) It’s a mark of Bascomb’s skill that, although the outcome of the race is well known, he keeps us in suspense, rendering in graphic detail the runners’ agony down the final stretch.
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