A man who sets out to become an artist at the mile is something like a man who sets out to discover the most graceful method of being hanged. No matter how logical his plans, he can not carry them out without physical suffering.
—PAUL O'NEIL, "A Man Conquers Himself,"
Sports Illustrated, May 31,1956
IN MELBOURNE'S Central Park, opposite his East Malvern house, John Landy watched his shadow. As he ran around a bluestone gravel path in flat-soled sand shoes, he studied the rhythm of his legs and the movement of his arms. He might never catch his shadow, but he could learn from it. Over the course of his run he balanced the action of his arms and legs. The higher he carried his arms, the more distance he won from his stride. However, the technique he was developing was more complicated than simply swinging his arms out and up as far as possible. If he overextended, he lost equilibrium in his stride and wasted energy. Rather, he was looking for symmetry of form—the place where his arm action was completely in sync with his knee lift and consequently the drive from his hips. His head needed to remain level, his center of gravity still, his shoulder muscles relaxed, and his feet landing from heel to toe, nearly flat-footed. And all of this needed to occur effortlessly. Slowly he was shaping his running style into one worthy of an "Inca courier," as a sportswriter later commented, one in which he would seem to almost float over the track.
By mid-September 1952, one month after returning from Helsinki, Landy was fast moving beyond Cerutty's teachings. Cerutty had promoted a low arm carriage, believing that man should run like a rooster, clawing at the air, or like African warriors, who carried spears by their sides over great distances. Landy preferred to mimic the European runners, who had proven themselves superior in style and performance at Helsinki. "They don't run on their toes like sprinters and paw the track with their spikes as I used to," Landy said. "With a higher arm carriage your knees automatically lift and you get a slightly longer stride. But, most important, there is no tension in the leg muscles. When it comes to the final spurt you have so much extra strength to get on your toes and sprint home. Try standing on your toes and feel the tension in your calf and thigh muscles, and see what I mean." With each passing day, his body grew more accustomed to this new style, and he was getting more return for his effort.
And there was a great deal of effort involved, particularly in the intensity of his training. Landy never wanted to step to the starting line again unless he was the fittest person on the track. His training sessions required intense dedication, and they were run smarter and harder than any guided by Cerutty. Before Helsinki his improvements resulted from a grab-bag collection of endurance work. Because Cerutty despised schedules, he had his gang run until they hurt and then he pushed them further. This was the crux of his training method. However, running a fast mile required more than simply putting up with pain. This conditioning worked only to a certain point. Middle-distance running was about more than stamina. According to Zatopek, one had to train for speed. Improvement there was won by subjecting the body to periods of high stress at a fast pace while reducing the recovery time between these periods. Zatopek sold this theory of repetition running by dint of his Helsinki success. His theory was now Landy's practice.
The training ideas that Landy had scribbled into his notebook had translated into hard regimen. Through the early Australian spring (while it was fall in the Northern Hemisphere), with Cerutty and his running mates still away on tour, Landy ran alone. His agricultural science studies demanded that he train at night, after he had finished with his papers and reading. At eleven o'clock or past midnight he slipped quietly out of his house, making sure not to wake his parents or four siblings, who had little idea of the extreme effort he was making. Many nights it was difficult to force himself to put on his shoes and get out there. As he put it, "The mind is always selling the body." He .often rationalized that he was too tired and might better put off the run until the next day, or that he deserved a day off. But then he would convince himself to run at least a few laps. "It's like a car starting. There's an immense amount of energy you need to start the car, but once you're rolling, it's easy." Since he had returned from the Olympics, Landy hadn't missed a single training session: this was a pure exercise of will.
On a typical night Landy walked across the street to Central Park and began a series of alternating fast and slow laps around the 600-yard oval path made of gravel. A few streetlights illuminated the make-do track, but even blindfolded, he would have known every inch of the way. Alone, the only sound his footsteps hitting gravel, he concentrated solely on how much faster he could push himself. He didn't carry a watch; his effort was measured by the interplay of exhaustion and recovery. For most of the lap he would maintain a fast even pace, but not all-out effort. Then he would burst ahead at the end and sprint until his legs felt uneasy below him. Next he reduced his pace to a jog, feeling his breath return and the pain ebb, but he slowed his pace only enough so that on the next lap he could repeat the fast even pace and surge. By stressing his legs and lungs to such an extreme point, he was immunizing himself to the pain.
An hour and a half into the session Landy had usually run eight to twelve 600-yard laps at a pace of roughly ninety seconds each (or a sixty-five-second 440-yard lap). Between each, he jogged a lap of the oval path in four minutes. He repeated these sessions—pushing himself to the limit of his physical abilities—five nights a week. On the remaining two nights in the week he ran seven miles, sometimes more, at a five-and-a-half- to six-minute pace, along the roads leading out of Melbourne. This was to build endurance. Regardless of weather, sore tendons, blistered feet, or fatigued muscles, Landy trained like this religiously.
It was the stringing together of session after session, without compromise of effort, that most tested his discipline. On a typical day he left his house by 8:00 A.M., walking a mile to the Caulfield railway station, where he took a train into the city. Occasionally some people remarked on how slowly he walked, but they had no idea of the limits to which he had pushed his body the previous night. At the University of Melbourne he attended classes on subjects like soil science, bacteriology, and farm economics, broke for lunch with his classmates, and then attended more lectures until he returned to East Malvern to have dinner with his family. Except for drinking a great deal of milk, his diet was utterly normal. He might relax briefly after dinner, but soon withdrew to his room to study for several hours before he sneaked out of the house to train again. Returning to the house long after midnight, he took a shower and then collapsed into bed.
In this schedule there were no spare moments for girlfriends or a social life, much to the dismay of his sisters. There was little time for a generous night of sleep either—he got six or seven hours at the most. Still Landy persisted, convinced that he was on the right path. Of the rigors of training he told Track and Field News: "The harder, the better." Of his motivation he told the Sydney Morning Herald, "I just go out there and work. I've got to punish myself to get anywhere." Of pain and injury he told Sports Illustrated, "There is no gray—just black and white....If you're hurt enough to limp, you can't run at all. If you aren't, it makes no difference."
Landy's resolve was extraordinary. It was sustained by a still-developing attraction to running. Unlike the experience of playing football with a team, he was the sole master of how well he ran the mile. And the harder he trained, the more control he had over his body to dictate this performance. He may not have noticed the dramatic change in his fitness, because he had experienced it slowly, but others certainly did. One weekend afternoon he invited eighteen-year-old up-and-comer Robbie Morgan-Morris out to train with him. The young runner, who had recently won a cross-country championship, was agog at the opportunity to run with an Olympian. He had seen Landy race against Macmillan before Helsinki but was astonished at what he saw in Central Park. Morgan-Morris followed behind Landy for a few laps but was soon run off his feet. Landy kept going and going, faster and faster. Nobody in all of Australia ran this way. Morgan-Morris thought to himself, How fast is this bloke doing this?
In October Les Perry returned from his Scandinavian tour. Perry had probably seen Landy run more than any other person. He knew how much his friend had improved under Cerutty, but when he visited Landy at Central Park, he was shocked to see Landy run so well. His legs and arms were more defined. His running style had been transformed. And the speed ... Perry tried to keep up with Landy on several laps, but couldn't.
"This is terrific sort of training," Perry said. He knew Landy had been disappointed about Helsinki, that it was in his nature to try to right the wrong of not performing at the level some might have expected, but this kind of speed and repetition work was beyond his imagination. "Is this the sort of thing you've been doing?"
"I've had a bit of a routine."
Later Landy told Perry that he had been following Zatopek's advice. Perry suspected that the Australian track and field community, Cerutty included, was in for a surprise when Landy next took to the track. When their coach tried to lasso Landy back into his fold, the runner was polite but clear: "I'm taking no more advice from anyone. I simply want to put together the best of what I've seen."
In the history of athletic training, selecting the best course for how to train, for how long, and at what intensity, has been a matter of intuition. Ancient Greek athletes trained by running in every direction save skyward. They skipped, jogged, hopped, and, on occasion, sprinted while rolling a large hoop in front of them. Their coaches carried forked sticks for motivating them. The Greeks understood the importance of increasing exertion over time, but their use of this theory lacked sophistication. Milo of Croton walked every day with a calf in his arms in order to gain strength in his arms and legs slowly as the cow matured. Hellenic runners trained on indefinite four-day schedules called tetras: the first day consisted of light exercise; the second, intense effort; the third, rest; and the fourth, moderate exercise. Before competitions they seasoned their meals with special herbs and mushrooms. Aristotle recommended training one's breath by holding it for increasing lengths of time; this improved strength and allowed the body to retain its spirits and humors.
The ancient Romans had their own ideas about how to prepare their athletes, whether gladiator or runner. In early training their diet was limited to dried figs, boiled grain, and fresh cheese. Later they added meat to their diet, generally pork, because, as one Roman advised, "If they lived but one day on any other food, [they] found their vigor manifestly impaired the next." They were allowed only small portions of water and were forbidden to engage in sexual intercourse. To familiarize themselves with pain, slaves flogged their backs with rhododendron branches until they bled. They exercised in the open air no matter the weather. They followed these sessions with tepid baths and copious amounts of sleep. The latter was supposed to enliven the athlete and promote muscular strength.
By the seventeenth century athletes were having their spleens removed to increase their speed, an operation with a one-in-five chance of death. Training techniques looked like they would never move beyond the arcane and bizarre until Captain Barclay of mile fame set down his ideas in writing in 1813. Generations of "pedestrians" followed his advice. Some of his suggestions, like purging the body by the use of Glauber salts, eating a breakfast of "beef-steak or muttonchops under-done, with stale bread and old beer," and lying in bed naked for a half-hour after exercise, were nonsensical. However, he also advised a rigorous regime of exercise that started at five o'clock in the morning and lasted throughout the day:
1. Sprint half-mile up a hill.
2. Walk six miles at a moderate pace.
3. Eat breakfast at seven o'clock.
4. Walk six miles at a moderate pace.
5. Lie in bed without clothes for a half-hour at twelve o'clock.
6. Walk four miles.
7. Eat dinner at four o'clock (same meal as breakfast).
8. Sprint half-mile immediately after dinner.
9. Walk six miles at moderate pace.
10. Retire to bed at eight o'clock.
Barclay had little understanding of why his regime produced results, but it had worked for him, so others suspected they would benefit from it as well. In subsequent years athletes replaced walking with more running, and both their fitness and speed continued to improve. Barclay's theories had provided a solid foundation.
Nonetheless, in the nineteenth century the general public still believed that too much exercise guaranteed an untimely death. In 1864 London Society, a widely read journal of the time, commented in regard to amateur athletics: "Not all training is good or desirable; very much is unquestionably injurious. The honour of a place in the representative eight of the Universities has been purchased in many instances at the cost of years of life." Some physicians thought that the heart had a limited number of beats over a lifetime and that speeding up the heart rate during exercise was a foolish waste of a very precious resource.
That athletes persisted in their efforts to see what was physically possible was testament to mankind's innate tenacity and desire to succeed. Walter George further stretched boundaries, explaining, "First, I figured out the time I thought the mile should be run in. Second, I started testing my theories and particularly my own constitution and capabilities; the result of this study soon convinced me that the then existing records at the distance were by no means good." His methods included speed drills, running on his toes in place, and extensive walks. Both speed and stamina were gradually built up as knowledge about the human body's limits and possibilities accumulated. In Britain and the United States, track and field manuals espousing the latest techniques began to appear on a regular basis. One published by an "athletic instructor" at Harvard in 1904 provided a typical schedule. Runners a century later would deem this laughable:
Monday a mile with a fairly good three-quarters and the last quarter easy. Tuesday a half mile in about two minutes ten seconds, a rest, and then another easier half mile, sprinting the last hundred yards. Wednesday jogging up and down the straightaway, rather quicker than if running a mile, followed by an easy one and one-half miles. Thursday a fast half, followed by a rest and an easy three-quarters. Friday an easy two miles, sprinting the last hundred yards. Saturday a mile trial on time. Sunday some walking.
The trials and the errors continued. In 1910 runner Alf Shrubb suggested walking sixteen miles three or four times a week to get in optimum shape. Paavo Nurmi proved that much longer training runs over the course of years would bring further improvements in time. Plus, he was an advocate of even-paced runs—keeping lap times consistent throughout to level out expenditure of effort. In the late 1920s marathoner Arthur Newton propagated continuous year-round exercise, including sessions of twenty miles a day. Jack Lovelock believed that hard work was necessary, but that an athlete risked staleness if he ran too many races. To combat this, he espoused "peak training"—building oneself up with stamina, then speed work, and then saving the best for race day. In the 1930s German physiologist Dr. Woldemar Gerschler promoted "interval training": he advised athletes to run a fast lap followed by a slow lap on the track. These were timed to ensure strict routine. Zatopek came up with the same idea by himself but refused to time his runs. Meanwhile, the Swedes, led by Haegg, believed that the key to training lay in "speed-play," known as Fartlek. This also included fast and slow combinations of running, but always away from the track. With Fartlek, to stay fresh, athletes needed the joy and freedom of running through forests, up and down hills, judging for themselves when to accelerate and when to hold back. The track was to be visited only for races.
Throughout the development of new techniques, doctors and laypeople alike continued to advise against the perils of so much running. In 1927 British physiologist and Nobel laureate Archibald Hill wrote that "it's not unusual for an athlete to tear a tendon, or to strain a muscle, and not unknown even for him to pull off a piece of a bone by an exceedingly violent effort. We are obviously not far from our limit of safety. If we doubled our speed of movement...athletics would become a highly dangerous pastime." Despite studies proving otherwise, the general belief was that overtraining could permanently damage the heart and other essential organs. Madness was assigned to those who pushed the boundaries of what was possible. Yet athletes continued to push to improve.
Timers, no timers, on the track, in the woods, schedules, no schedules, staleness, peaks, plateaus, stamina versus speed, the Stotan life, long walks, runs of ten miles a week, twenty, thirty, fifty—training had advanced a long way from carrying calves and flogging backs, but not to the point of certainty. By the 1950s coaches and former athletes had started a cottage industry out of giving (often conflicting) advice. Fads were common, and the latest champions were proclaimed to have the perfect method—until they were beaten by others. The only sure thing was that questions about how to train had many answers, and every athlete had to find his own way.
Landy had found his own way since returning from Helsinki, and he followed it mercilessly. His new running style and Zatopek-inspired training routine promised great returns, yet he had no idea how great. By Saturday, October 25, 1952, ten weeks had passed without a race or even a timed trial. In his training he had run over five hundred miles, many at near race pace, and he was slowly reducing the recovery time between fast laps to increase the pressure on his body. He knew how well he compared against his friends on Central Park's gravel path, but not against the clock.
In the first race of the outdoor season between Victoria's amateur athletic clubs, Landy crossed the finish line for Geelong Guild in 4:17. He looked back to see his nearest competitor over a hundred yards behind. The Melbourne Argus reporter Ken Moses believed that Landy had held back and could have run at least five seconds faster. Moses predicted that Landy would break Don Macmillan's Australian mile record of 4:09 by season's end. The next week Landy ran a three-mile race, beating the Australian cross-country champion Neil Robbins by three hundred yards and trimming Les Perry's record by sixteen seconds. On November 8 he drew away from his competitors, including Perry, in the second lap of a 2,000-meter race, winning easily and setting another record. During the week Landy continued to train, harnessing more strength with each session. It was clear that he was on the verge of something extraordinary.
On November 15, in the mile at Olympic Park, Landy "spread-eagled the field," as Moses described the race in which Landy led from the middle of the first lap and finished half a lap ahead of his competitors in 4:14.8. After the race he entertained questions from the small herd of Melbourne athletics reporters. He said that he ran in his oldest pair of shoes because he wanted to save himself for a really good time in early December. "Two- and three-mile events are my objective at the moment," he said. "I am out to build up stamina and only racing in those events will help me. It was stamina that beat me when I was away at the Games, and I do not want it to happen again." Three days later he entered one of those two-mile races and broke another record. Keenly aware of Landy's early season success, the Melbourne press sensed more records would soon fall. Athletics reporters made the rounds of his friends to see what they expected to happen. Perry commented that there was "nothing surer" than Landy breaking Macmillan's record and that Landy might even get his mile time down to 4:06. Steve Hayward of the Melbourne Herald suspected that in a couple of years Landy could equal Gaston Reiff, who had recently run a 4:02.8 mile, the first sub-4:03 mile since Haegg and Andersson had competed over seven years before. Hayward would not have to wait that long.
On December 12, Landy attended a reunion of Australian Olympians held at Bob Prentice's house. It was a Friday night, a chance to let off some steam, take a break from training, and relax with friends. They drank Foster's lager, ate sausage rolls, and reminisced about Zatopek and other stars they had met. They also joked about Cerutty's behavior in London and Helsinki. They avoided talk of their defeats by much more capable European and American runners, though these memories would always color their time together. At one point in the evening the conversation shifted to Landy and his season to date. Many knew of his increased training, but they were unaware of the specifics and certainly had no idea of the full scale of the effort involved. They were simply excited about how much he had improved, and they guessed that once he had someone to give him chase in a race, a good mile time was inevitable. Landy shrugged off the suggestion, preferring not to be the focus of attention. "I can only do what I can do," he said.
The next day brought a welcome break from a weeklong summer storm that had flooded highways throughout Victoria. Tales of families marooned by the floods led the news. John Landy put in his half-day filing land titles and finished at noon, feeling a bit queasy from the long night and a lack of food. After grabbing his bag with his track clothes, he decided to get some fresh air and walk to Olympic Park. He had a race at half past two.
On his way to the stadium he stopped for a chocolate ice cream sundae. When that failed to satisfy his appetite, he ate a pair of meat pies to hold him over until after the race. It wasn't the diet that Cerutty or the Greeks would have suggested, but for Landy this day was no more special than the next. He then strolled down the banks of the Yarra River for a few kilometers until he reached the track.
Though Melbourne had come a long way from its foundation in 1835 as a British outpost, the city remained mostly a collection of villages connected by tram lines. Car traffic was seldom a problem, and church steeples still ranked as the tallest buildings on the skyline. Bars closed at 6:00 P.M., television had not yet invaded living rooms, and along with barbeques, town hall dances, and private parties, local sport was one of the main entertainment outlets.
The athletes who belonged to Landy's Geelong Guild and its competing clubs ranged from students to opticians, accountants, hairdressers, and milkmen. Few Melbourne athletes, let alone Melbourne itself, ever made international news, and among the stories in the morning papers—about potato prices dropping, city budget improvements, a thwarted gold heist, and a mile race at Olympic Park—nobody could have expected the last item to launch Melbourne onto front pages around the world, least of all Landy himself. It was too absurd to imagine.
Olympic Park was the center of the city's amateur athletics and the site of one of the two international-standard tracks in Australia. The flat stretch of land next to the river on which it stood had been used over the years for everything from farming to army training and motorcycle races. In the 1920s a local businessman upgraded the grounds, installing a track that he laid with crushed scoria (a porous rock cinder produced from volcanic eruptions). The track was set within a natural bowl surrounded by grass-covered hills on three sides and concrete tiers of seats on the fourth. At best, the place was unremarkable, and despite its name, it had never hosted an Olympic Games.
By two o'clock Landy had switched into his Geelong Guild singlet and the white European track shoes that he had brought back with him from Helsinki. They had served Landy well on his previous runs this season. He warmed up at the grass oval track adjacent to the main track, a routine involving a few stretches, some jogging, and a couple of sprints. Since the previous week's three-mile race had been rained out, he felt as though he had some nervous energy to burn off. In the back of his mind he thought he might have a fast run in him today. Nevertheless, he planned to wait until halfway through the race to decide whether he should make an all-out effort. It depended on his rhythm and how he was feeling. There was no sense going into the race weighed down by the expectation of a good time.
"I think they called your race," another athlete said.
Lost in thought, Landy had missed the track official's announcement for the mile event. If he was late to the line, he would be disqualified. He raced over the hill toward the track and hustled into the pack of milers getting into their places for the start, making it just in time. There were enough milers in the race to warrant a line two men deep. Landy was placed in the second row. The starter gave his usual instructions: "Nobody will cross over in front of another, unless you're two clear yards in front. ... We have a mile race, four laps. You'll get the bell with one lap to go." The runners jockeyed into position.
Each club team stood together alongside the track. The stands were lightly scattered with family and friends, including Landy's parents. Only a few reporters were on hand. There were no programs, concession stands, or banners. Many spectators chose to sit on the hill along the finishing straight. They had spread wool rugs across the grass and sipped from flasks of cordial or tea. Rarely through the afternoon had they broken out in more than subdued applause. The meet, like many others, felt like a "country picnic," as Cerutty gang member Trevor Robbins described it.
"On your marks ...set..." The starter's gun fired.
Les Perry went out fast, faster than normal. Without Landy's knowledge, Perry had decided to pull his friend around the track for as long as he could. A sixty-second lap was flat out sprinting for him, and three-quarters of the way through the first lap he was still in the lead, but fading. There was no way he could keep it up much longer. As Landy passed him on the straight before the end of the first lap, Perry whispered to himself, "Do it, John," hoping that his friend would break Macmillan's record.
Landy was on his own. He ran on the outside of the first lane because the track to the inside edge had been chewed up from prior events and a week's worth of heavy rain. He finished a very good first lap in 59.2 seconds. He was running easily. In the lead, with the rest of the field behind him, he relaxed into the rhythm of the run. For him relaxation came from the fingers; he liked to keep his hands soft, almost open as he strode around the track. Once in the rhythm, he could then increase his tempo if needed. As he finished the second lap, he heard a time called out: two minutes. Trevor Robbins and Malvern Harrier half-miler Len McRae, who studied agricultural science with Landy, had positioned themselves on the straight to call out times so their friend would know how fast he was going. Fast. Landy thought the time was either wrong—or that he was about to run an incredible mile. The time was wrong, but only by one second. Landy finished the half-mile in 2:01.
For the past ten weeks he had run countless laps at a hard pace and was nearly immune to the pain caused from exertion. He continued to run relaxed, despite the blistering pace. As the bell for the final lap rang Robbins shouted out, "Three minutes and three seconds." No way would he run a sixty-five-second last lap, Landy thought—no way. His mile would be good, at least good enough to break Macmillan's record. He was hardly exhausted and felt he had a fair bit of acceleration still in his legs.
"Then I went," Landy later said of the start of his fourth lap. He put every gain from his months of training into that last lap. The crowd of two hundred people rose and cheered as he entered the back straight. He increased his tempo but maintained rhythm. He pressed harder and harder, his stride lengthening in the final turn. McRae and Robbins rushed down to the head of the straight to get a closer look. They knew Landy was about to run an incredible time. When he passed the 1,500-meter mark in a little over 3:45, they shouted themselves hoarse for Landy to go faster as he tore down the straight. Robbins sensed that history was about to be written in Olympic Park. Trailing far behind, Perry urged Landy on in his mind. In full stride, Landy broke the tape and slowed to a jog. His breath was heavy, but he was nowhere near the point of collapse. Turning, he saw the timekeepers huddled together. Landy thought there was something wrong.
Half-miler Len McRae ran toward him. "You ran 4:03," he said.
"What?" Landy exclaimed.
"We've been timing it."
Within moments, before he had regained his breath, reporters crowded around Landy, asking questions. The loudspeakers announced the time: 4:02.1. Everyone in Olympic Park gave Landy a standing ovation. It was the third-fastest mile in history.
Reporters' pencils flew across notebooks while he came to terms with what he had accomplished: he had brought his best mile time down by eight seconds and approached Haegg's long-standing world record by seven-tenths of a second. Landy told reporters about his new running style and said that for the first time in his athletic career he had the confidence in his conditioning to lead from the front.
"Most of the credit must go to Perce," Landy said, generous despite his split with his former coach. "Had it not been for him I would not have got anywhere near my time today. Only hard work gets results. Perce has been telling us that all the time, and our trip to the Games confirmed what he said."
While Landy explained the genesis of his run and the timekeepers and track officials nervously followed protocol to secure the record time, Percy Cerutty entered the stadium with his wife for the first time since arriving back in Australia. He couldn't understand why crowds of people were bustling about the track and infield. Events should be taking place. Something had happened. He spotted Les Perry by the stands.
"What... what's going on? What's all the excitement?" Cerutty asked.
"Landy just ran a four-two mile," Perry said.
Cerutty registered the time like a blow. His face fell. Then he exploded. "Here's a bloke who's come home like a whipped dog from the Olympics—couldn't qualify for a final in 4:14. And then he comes back and does this! After all the effort to get the money together to get him over there, he's bloody well wasted the fare!" Sitting in the stands, Landy's parents heard what Cerutty said and stepped away so they wouldn't have to listen to any more of his remarks. Only later would they tell their son. He deserved to enjoy his moment.
After Landy signed the necessary forms to ratify the record (which included verification that the track distance and official watches were accurate), the festivities continued in the bar underneath the stands. Landy and his friends had some beers and talked more about the race. This was the best race of his life—the most unexpected and therefore the most rewarding as well. Landy was overjoyed.
When he went home to have dinner with his parents, it was clear that his 4:02.1 run had changed everything for Landy. Winning the Australian Championships and owning the Australian mile record were minor in comparison to what was possible now—and to what would be expected from him. From the most unlikely of places, by the most unlikely of athletes, the world was put on notice that the mile barrier was in play.