Record Holders
Breaking the four-minute barrier was first achieved on May 6, 1954, by Roger Bannister. Two months later, during the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games hosted in Vancouver, B.C., two competing runners, Australia's John Landy and Bannister, ran the distance of one mile in under four minutes. The race's end is memorialized in a statue of the two (with Landy glancing over his shoulder, thus losing the race) placed in front of the Pacific National Exhibition entrance plaza.
New Zealand's John Walker, the first man to run the mile under 3:50, managed to run 135 sub-four-minute miles during his career (during which he was the first person to run over 100 sub-four-minute miles), and American Steve Scott has run the most sub-four-minute miles, with 136. Currently, the mile record is held by Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a time of 3:43.13 in Rome in 1999.
In 1964, America's Jim Ryun became the first high school runner to break four minutes for the mile, running 3:59.0 as a junior and a then-American record 3:55.3 as a senior in 1965. Tim Danielson (1966) and Marty Liquori (1967) also came in under four minutes, but Ryun's high school record stood until Alan Webb ran 3:53.43 in 2001. Ten years later, in 2011, Lukas Verzbicas became the fifth high schooler under four minutes.
Another illustration of the progression of performance in the men's mile is that in 1994, forty years after Bannister's breaking of the barrier, the Irish runner Eamonn Coghlan became the first man over the age of 40 to run a sub-four-minute mile. Because Coughlan surpassed the mark indoors and before the IAAF validated indoor performances as being eligible for outdoor records, World Masters Athletics still had not recognized a sub-4 minute mile performance as a record in the M40 division. Many elite athletes made the attempts to extend their careers beyond age 40 to challenge that mark. Over 18 years after Coughlan, that was finally achieved by UK's Anthony Whiteman, running 3:58.79 on June 2, 2012.
No woman has yet run a four-minute mile: the current women's world record is held by retired Russian Svetlana Masterkova, with a time of 4:12.56 in 1996.
In 1997, Daniel Komen of Kenya ran two miles in less than eight minutes, doubling up on Bannister's accomplishment.
Read more about this topic: Four-minute Mile
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