May 2004 Issue

Track’s Most Famous Race, 50 Years Later

There it is on the cover of the May 1954 issue of Track & Field News. An article titled “Bannister, His Day Of Days.” The long-anticipated cracking of miling’s 4:00 barrier—less than 60 seconds average for each of four laps of 440 yards—was finally history and Roger Bannister’s name had become firmly etched in the annals of sport.

Here are selected highlights from that unbylined article as it ran in T&FN (modified to reflect stylistic changes, and with some historical clarifications noted):

Oxford, England, May 6—A pitifully small crowd of only 1200 waited in expectant silence for the results of the mile run in a dual meet between Oxford University and the British AAA team held on the Oxford track at Iffley Road.

”Ladies and gentlemen,” spoke the solemn voice of announcer Norris McWhirter [later to become famous as one of the founders of the Guinness Book Of World Records], “here is the result of event No. 9, the one-mile: 1st, No. 41, 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, British All-Corner’s, European, British Empire, and World’s Record. The time was THREE...”

A roar from the spectators drowned further words. The 4:00 mile had been run.

The longest-awaited of all the coveted goals in track & field had been reached. The figures “3:59.4” and the name “Roger Bannister” flashed around the world…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

What’s Up With U.S. Miling?

U.S. runners, while never dominating international 1500 competition, at least used to be competitive.

Now they’re on the fringe of becoming irrelevant

at the major championship level. Why?

by Dan Lilot

When asked what he thinks about the current state of U.S. miling, Peter Snell gives a biting, one-word response: “Pathetic.”

Not wishing to sound defeatist, the New Zealand legend—whose running résumé includes World Records and Olympic golds in both the 800 and 1500—quickly adds, “There’s promise. But in terms of Olympic medals it’s been quite poor.”

Poor indeed. Not since Jim Ryun’s silver in ’68, a feat then considered a failure for the favored Kansan, has the U.S. mined a medal of any color at the Games.

From ’60 through ’93, Americans were only shut out of the World Rankings twice, but in the last decade only Steve Holman has cracked the top 10, becoming the last to do so in ’97.

Steve Scott and Jim Spivey both scored World Champs medals in the ’80s, but the consistent fast times and high placings that they—and other Americans—made commonplace during that decade would short-circuit track message boards were they to be repeated today.

And the U.S. Records for the 1500 (3:29.77, Sydney Maree, ’85) and mile (3:47.69, Scott, ’82) have gathered dust and are in no danger of falling anytime soon.

But instead of simply bemoaning the state of the mile and its metric cousin, T&FN talked to several coaches and former top American milers to determine what has gone wrong and what can be done about it.

Is it The Training?

Snell is not just some curmudgeonly former champion, criticizing the younger generation from afar. He is also an exercise physiologist and researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and an astute observer of the sport.

And he has espoused his ideas of where American middle distance runners have gone awry at several USATF-sponsored clinics and summits. His views…

(for more, including opinions from Brooks Johnson, Bernard Lagat, Marty Liquori, Jim Ryun, Steve Scott, Jim Spivey and Hicham El Guerrouj’s coach, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

At Home With The World’s Greatest Miler

T&FN Managing Editor Sieg Lindstrom spent the better part of a week in Morocco checking out Hicham El Guerrouj’s training

by Sieg Lindstrom

You have entered the Hall Of The Mile King, El Guerrouj. A drive eastward from coastal Casablanca on highways that are outstanding by North African standards has carried you through a spring landscape of green rolling hills dotted with yellow, purple, orange and red wildflowers.

You have ascended into the Middle Atlas Mountains until, as a chilly rain turns to hail, you have reached mile-high Ifrane (ee-FRAHN). Winter has not yet let go here, even though April is just a couple of days away.

The landscape could easily be California. The houses might be described as Mountain Swiss Modern, with steeply pitched roofs.

“Ifrane is OK,” a top European miler said after training in the town this winter, “but there’s not enough to do in the evenings.”

The disco shortage does not concern El Guerrouj, who has been coming here four or five times a year for 3-week altitude training blocks ever since he entered the development program of the Moroccan federation (FRMDA) in ’91.

“The most difficult day of my life,” he says, “will be when I wake up and know that I am no longer an athlete. I have been running since I first knew myself. If you ask me what I was doing on March 30, 1996, I can tell you what I did.” Because it was the same thing he is doing today, March 30, 2004, and the same thing he did last March 30.

While El G’s workout schedules from season to season don’t really match up day for day, his program at any given time of year is a known quantity, modeled—with only slight modification—on what he has done before.

Today, as a blustery wind carries raindrops down from a leaden-gray sky, making the 36-degree late afternoon feel much colder, El Guerrouj—wearing a ski cap, gloves and sweats—warms up. Nothing fancy: stretches, form drills, strides.

The workout will be…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

Collegiate Record 4x4 At The Texas Relays

by Andrew Jensen

The “unofficial-official” kickoff to the outdoor track season ended with the kind of daylight fireworks fans have come to expect at the Texas Relays, and the 4th of July may have nothing on the Longhorn women by the end of this season.

Bev Kearney’s squad ended yet another MVP Team performance in Austin by shattering the Collegiate Record in the 4 x 400 in front of a sun-soaked overflow crowd of more than 22,000 Horn-Hooking fans.

The foursome of soph Sharetta Jones (52.8), senior Raasin McIntosh (50.7), frosh Jerrika Chapple (50.0) and soph sensation Sanya Richards (50.3) thrilled the crowd with a time of 3:23.75 to obliterate the previous record of 3:26.46 set by South Carolina in ’02.

Richards (see p. 24) handled the anchor as Texas beat LSU’s 3:29.64 by nearly 6 seconds, but the stunner was the resurgent Chapple, who had actually been faster as a high school yearling than she was in her next three years as a prep.

McIntosh, named MVP for her role on the recordsetting team and her repeat win in the 400H (a world-leading 55.29), said Chapple wasn’t the only one who could have helped break the record. “The great thing about our team is we have about three other girls who could run this race just as well,” she said.…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee—Justin Gatlin still is in the middle of heavy weightroom training and hasn’t done any real speedwork. So neither the 22-year-old sprinter nor coach Trevor Graham expected him to churn a 20.21 at Tennessee’s Sea-Ray Relays, the fastest U.S. 200 of the young season.

“His training intensity was pretty high all winter, so it was good for him to go back to his old school, see friends and relax a little,” said Graham.

Gatlin explained, “Besides seeing my former teammates, I wanted to work on my technique in the race, especially coming off the curve.” Gatlin rolled off the bend and…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

T&FN Interview: Sanya Richards

by Jim Dunaway

Sanya Richards is a composed, serious-but-playful and articulate 19-year-old who speaks in complete sentences, without a single “you know” or “like” in more than half an hour of conversation.

As a runner, she seems to flow rather than to be producing a maximum effort. In fact, she doesn’t appear to be running excessively fast until the race is over and you look at your stopwatch.

Richards came to the United States from Jamaica seven years ago with her parents, Newton and Sharon (and her younger sister Shari), and she became a U.S. citizen in May ’02. The family lives in Pembroke Pines, Florida, where her father is a real estate investor (“On a small scale,” she adds) and her mother is a travel counselor.

We caught up with her during the hectic Texas Relays weekend, where she anchored the Longhorn team that crushed the Collegiate Record in the 4x4 (see p. 22):

T&FN: How did you start running track?

Richards: I was 7 years old in Jamaica, at a sports day. I won a race for my team and that’s where it all started.

T&FN: Who were your first heroes, or heroines?…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

Bekele Drives Steamroller

by Sean Hartnett

One does not head to Brussels in March for the weather. So it was that the rain which drenched Saturday’s competition at the World Cross Country Championships—and fell again over the final laps of the 12K on Sunday—was as expected as the extension of Kenenisa Bekele’s masterful reign as the king of the event.

In regal splendor, Bekele strode confidently around the historic IRIS Crosscup course—appearing ever so comfortable even when ripping up hills, or deciding the issue with strategic bursts of speed or settling back into a steady-state pace that simply shredded the assembled challengers to his throne.

Bekele’s powerful manager, Dutchman Jos Hermens, has aptly pegged his client the “Fine Young Cannibal” in deference to the ’80s pop band and the way the soft-spoken superstar tears through his competition.

the sheer brilliance of Bekele’s harrier skills is best appreciated when one considers the talent pool left in his wake and the ease of his victories. “I wanted to show that for the third time I was able to make history with this double,” he said.

Yet in Brussels, the 21-year-old Bekele was…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

What Happened To Kenya?

by Kirk Reynolds

After coming in with high expectations after all the preparations at a high-altitude camp, Kenya’s performance at the World Cross left many severely frustrated.

For most countries, the results wouldn’t be deemed disastrous: one team title, four 2nds and a 3rd, two individual medalists.

At a World Championship this is a sterling showing, but for Kenya the results caused national hand-wringing. Kenya lost both the men’s 12K (race for the first time since ’85, ending an incredible 18-year run) and 4K (for the first time since the short race’s inception in ’98). Besides simply winning during the past two decades, the nation had also built a reputation for remarkably successful team tactics.

All of that ended decisively in Brussels, and any rationalization using the wet, blustery weather as an excuse for Kenya’s demise was flattened by the steamrolling success of Ethiopia, whose results on the looping 2km course were, well, Kenyan-esque. Ethiopia’s results are the ones that Kenya wanted for its own runners.

“The Kenyans were not as strong as we expected,” said Ethiopian superstar Kenenisa Bekele. “We thought they would come up with new tactics.”

In Kenya’s The Nation newspaper in the days following the meet, writer Peter Njenga wrote that the results from Brussels were some “of the darkest in Kenya’s athletic history…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

Olympic Trials Preview: Men’s Pole Vault

by Jon Hendershott

ULTRA-EXPERIENCED vaulter Jeff Hartwig has a simple approach to the Olympic Trials: “Going in, people always try to make predictions—but all you can predict is that the Trials are too unpredictable.”

The American Record holder has been world class for a decade, a veteran’s veteran among elite U.S. jumpers. The ’96 Olympian set his current AR, 19-91/4, just before the ’00 Trials, so went into Sacramento as the favorite.

But, unpredictably, Hartwig had vision problems due to his contact lenses and didn’t make it out of the qualifying. He also now knows his even bigger mistake was “looking beyond the Trials to the Games.

“I expected to make the team and my training was geared toward the Games. I looked ahead to Sydney before the Trials even were held. But you can’t ever do that because the Trials are so do-or-die on that day.”

So, the best advice—for vaulters and fans—may be: get ready for a wild Trials ride, full of surprises.

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials: De Reuck Leads Last

by Sean Hartnett

The Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials took the form of a 3-act play: first Blake Russell assumed the leading role of a solo runner out ahead of the pack, then Deena Kastor, then finally Colleen De Reuck.

When the final curtain fell De Reuck had scored a stunning 2:28:25 win, finishing 73 seconds ahead of the favored Kastor as both bettered Margaret Groos’s OT Record of 2:29:50..…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

Long Beach Poly Strikes Again

by Brian Russell

Arcadia, California—The focus for the girls of Long Beach Poly at the Arcadia Invitational was to erase any doubt as to which team in America (let alone Long Beach) was the nation’s best.

After arch-rival Long Beach Wilson put up list-leading relays of 44.93, 1:35.22 and 3:40.94 (plus a 9:24.62) at the Texas Relays a week earlier, pundits were wondering whether or not the Jackrabbits would use this year’s edition of the country’s best in-season invitational as a vehicle to strut their stuff.

Well, strut they did…

(for more, read the May Issue of Track & Field News)

What’s the most popular event in the sport, the mile or the 100?

by E. Garry Hill

All miling, all the time! That’s certainly the impression you’ll get from reading the front part of this month’s edition of the magazine, as we take the theme of Roger Bannister’s historic first sub-4:00 mile and continue on through an analysis of what’s up with today’s crop of U.S. milers and then pay a long visit to reigning mile king Hicham El Guerrouj on his home stomping grounds.

It’s a lot of space to devote to one event, but then, the mile is the general fan’s favorite race, is it not?

It certainly used to be, but…