Bannister, Roger Gilbert (1929– )

English track and field athlete. He was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. He achieved this feat at Iffley Road, Oxford, England, on 6 May 1954, in a time of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.

Career highlights

World records

Commonwealth Games

European Championships

Bannister broke the four-minute barrier on one more occasion: at the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada, when he was involved with John Landy from Australia, in the ‘Mile of the Century’, so called because it was a clash between the only two people to have broken the four-minute barrier for the mile at that time. An eminent neurologist, he was knighted in 1975.