11

We must wake up to the fact that athletics is not, nor ever can be perfected; there will always be more to learn.

—ARTHUR "GREATHEART" NEWTON,
legendary long-distance runner (1949)

WEARING JACKETS AND TIES, Roger Bannister and Norris McWhirter exited the subway car at the Holborn tube station in central London on their way home from a late dinner party. It was eleven o'clock, and the station was nearly deserted as they made their way through the labyrinthine tunnel toward the escalators. At the base of the escalators they decided to attempt to run up the one that led down. Holborn was one of the city's deepest stations, and it would require some effort to reach the top. Both knew the attempt was childish, but they found it no less compelling—nothing wrong with a little harmless fun. Halfway up, the attempt proved less simple than either had imagined. It was a long way, and to ease off only an instant doubled the effort required. They couldn't let up now. To the few subway riders ascending on the proper escalator, they looked like lunatics. Still, they continued to drive up the steps, urged on by the embarrassment they would suffer at being shot back down to the bottom. At the top, winded and legs burning, they reveled in their triumph.

Neither young man drew much of a lesson from the late evening escapade, but if Bannister was ever to achieve the four-minute mile, he knew he couldn't let up with his training. It was unlikely that Landy or Santee would slack off. But by September 1953 Bannister needed a change from pursuing this uphill battle on his own. He had started his final year at St. Mary's and was to take his medical board exams the following summer. He would have to hang up his spikes in August 1954 after the Empire Games in Vancouver and the European Games in Berne. Bannister wanted to finish his running career on a high by winning these two championships and breaking the mile barrier. For the first time, though, he wasn't sure he could do it alone.

The previous season had ended badly. On his return from his North Wales hiking trip, he suffered a terrible thrashing by the press for the secret Motspur Park attempt, followed by an embarrassing decision from the British Amateur Athletic Board to reject his 4:02 mile at Motspur Park as a British record. The board announced that it

has been compelled to take this action because it does not consider the event was a bona fide competition according to the rules. The Board wishes it to be known that whilst appreciating the public enthusiasm for record performances, and the natural and commendable desire of athletes to accomplish them, it does not regard individual record attempts as in the best interest of athletics as a whole.

The decision was based on the failure of the two other runners to complete the race and the lack of prior advertising for the event. Bannister accepted this decision without appeal, though the rebuke from amateur officials stung. In hindsight, he knew it was wrong to have attempted the record in conditions so far outside those of a normal race, but at the time there seemed to be no other choice if he was to be the first to break the mile record.

In the AAA Championships mile, Bannister ran a 4:05.2 but was overshadowed by Gordon Pirie, who broke the world record in the six-mile race. Pirie was unabashed about training for hours each day. Many considered him the future ideal of British athletics, though it was rumored that he was almost a professional given that his employers at a paint sales company allowed him as much time off as he needed to train and race—his name association with the company presumably providing all the benefit of their arrangement. In August Bannister managed to participate in a world record 4 x 1 mile relay event and ran his best half-mile time, but Pirie was the man of the hour, particularly after beating Santee at the British Games.

Bannister appreciated having the limelight shift to another runner, but he had to wonder whether Pirie, who boasted that the mile barrier was in his sights, might be more fit to go for the record. After all, Joseph Binks, a longtime Bannister supporter, had declared after the British Games that "Pirie is the most extraordinary runner the world has known, bearing in mind his amazing type of training and the distances over which he seems to be able to beat records."

For seven years Bannister had followed his own advice and methodically improved his times. He hadn't relied on others to help him train or to sustain his level of commitment. Although his list of race championships and record times was pages long, he found himself coming up short when it came to his greatest athletic ambitions. In the fall of 1953 he took his first step away from his press-decreed "lone wolf" approach by running with Chris Brasher at the Paddington track during lunchtime.

Born in British Guiana into a family at the top end of the social ladder, Brasher had been educated at the esteemed Rugby public school and at St. John's College, Cambridge. He took nothing in life for granted, however; his achievements were won with a fierce drive, great energy, and a never-say-die attitude. When Brasher discovered that he did not have the natural talent to be a miler (an asthmatic, he wheezed around the track), he took to the steeplechase, which required more strength and determination than anything else. He intended to make it to the 1956 Olympics. Outside athletics, Brasher was an avid climber and just missed the 1953 British expedition to Everest. What he lacked in technical skills as a climber he made up for by demanding the impossible from himself—and others. "Enthusiasm was the feature you noticed about him right away," said one friend. "He was a thrusting sort of person.... You had the feeling that he wanted to master what he was doing and literally forced himself to do it," said another. By the fall of 1953 Brasher was balancing his athletics and climbing while working for Mobil Oil in a management trainee program.

For the past year Brasher had trained with Franz Stampfl, a man of equal immoderation who coached athletes on the grounds of the Duke of York's Barracks in Chelsea on Friday evenings and in Battersea Park over the weekend. Stampfl had given Brasher a training schedule, and part of it he fulfilled by running with Bannister at the Paddington track. On occasion they were joined by Chris Chataway, who had lately started training with the Austrian coach as well.

Like Brasher, Chataway wasn't the type one would immediately identify as a runner. His stout build was better suited for rugby than fast miles, and he enjoyed a less than healthy admiration for smoking and drinking, particularly after a good hard race. Furthermore, he never seemed to like running very much, particularly when it came to hard training, which he abhorred. Of the regimes endured by the likes of Landy and Zatopek, he said, "For me and many others, it is simply more than we could stand." That said, Chataway had always excelled at running, loving the thrill of competition. At eighteen he clocked a 4:27.2 mile; in 1950, while performing his National Service as an officer cadet, he set an inter-Services record with a 4:15.6 mile; and at the 1952 Olympics he might have won the 5,000-meter event (his best distance) except for falling at the last turn. It was the mettle he showed by finishing the race that distinguished him as a runner. Norris McWhirter wrote that he was "a man of spirit—the right spirit."

Two years younger than Bannister, Chataway was the oldest of four children whose father was slowly dying from angina. He had graduated from Oxford that summer and had since taken a job as an under-brewer with Guinness. He had all but given up on running in order to earn a living when Stampfl got hold of him. "He invested with magic this whole painful business of trying to run fast," said Chataway of his new coach. "He made you feel that this would be the most wonderful thing. It would put you along with Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, if you could do it, and he was quite convinced you could do it."

After a few weeks of running with Bannister, Brasher and Chataway convinced their friend to meet with Stampfl. "Come and join us, because it's fun," they said at first. Bannister resisted. It had been a long time since he had taken a coach (or "rubber," as they were called, from Victorian times when masseurs used to be the ones who gave advice). Training for distance events was about getting the best out of oneself by making minor adjustments in how much to push the body. How could a coach read this better than the athlete himself? Although Bannister was finding training with others helpful and he liked the companionship, this was taking it too far. Surely Stampfl could help him, Brasher and Chataway pressed, just as he had helped them. Brasher was most insistent. He believed that taking a coach was essential. "It is absolutely necessary to have someone to whom you can turn, who is entirely honest with you," he said. "Who you know will not give spurious advice. This for me was my coach, which wasn't so much how to lift my arms or legs up, but when I felt that I have had it, he came on reassured, showed me the goals ahead....I don't think anyone can be so self-sufficient that they don't feel the need for somebody else."

For a very long time Bannister had admittedly followed a solitary path, one that did not allow him the comfort or insight of others. His failure to break the mile record the previous season had finally brought him to the point where he decided to open himself up to others. He had come as far as he could on his own. In October, after a day at the hospital, he went to meet Stampfl at the Duke of York's Barracks to listen to what he had to say. Chataway and Brasher were with him. The training ground was just off Sloane Square, an upmarket area in west London. Adjacent to the barracks housing Territorial Army soldiers was a cinder track. It was in poor shape and smaller than standard—roughly five laps to a mile. In the early evening the track and a drill hall in the barracks were not used, and Stampfl had arranged with the army to use the facilities to coach athletes. He charged one shilling per session.

When Bannister entered the large hall, Stampfl was leading a group of forty athletes through warm-up exercises, mostly pushups and calisthenics. His thick Austrian accent echoed throughout the large room as he urged his athletes onward. Stampfl was barrel-chested and almost six feet tall. As he approached Bannister and his companions, he looked even bigger, his stride strong, features sharp, and eyes alight with power. Despite being in a room full of athletes in sweats and shorts, he wore a Savile Row blazer, corduroy pants, and polished shoes. He looked more like an intellectual, albeit a massive one, than a coach.

Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1913, Stampfl was the son of an Austrian general and had studied writing and painting in his native city. A talented skier and javelin thrower, he had always had sport in his life, and he participated in the 1932 Olympics in the javelin. In 1936, sensing the inevitable rise of Hitler, he moved to England to study at Cambridge University. Two years later, when Hitler marched into Austria, the British government demanded that Stampfl leave the country unless he could show a unique, necessary skill. Having taught skiing back in his homeland, Stampfl pitched AAA officials to coach their athletes in the latest training methods. His overpowering presence won him a job in Northern Ireland. When Britain declared war on Germany, Stampfl returned to England to join up with the RAF but was interned immediately as an "enemy alien."

He went on a hunger strike to protest his confinement. Early one July morning in 1940 he was shipped to Australia on the liner ship Arandora Star with a host of other prisoners of war. In the middle of the North Sea a German U-boat torpedoed the ship. Explosions ripped through the Arandora Star. Within thirty minutes, amid screams of fear and dying, the ship flooded with water and eventually sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. To survive, Stampfl forced a steel plate aside to get to the surface of the ship and then jumped into the cold, oil-slicked sea. For eight hours he swam, warding off shock from the cold and struggling to keep his head above the water before a rescue boat sighted him. Hundreds died in the disaster, but those who survived were interned and shipped once again to Australia. There Stampfl was sent to an internment camp in Hay, and to ease the desperation plaguing the prisoners he organized athletics—boxing, wrestling, and football matches. "It was not just a job for me," he said. "It was an inner desire to survive and remain sane for myself and my friends in camp."

When the war ended, Stampfl married an Australian woman he met in Melbourne and moved back to London. Although he had suffered terribly over the previous years and still had trouble sleeping under linens or far from an open window because of his long confinement, he still admired the English, particularly their love for amateur sport, and felt that their athletes could use his help. He reconnected with amateur officials and found a number of coaching posts, including part-time ones at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Still, he was not asked to aid the British Olympic team in 1952, evidence that amateur officials never brought him fully into their fold because he was an outsider. Instead, he assisted the Pakistani team.

Coaching was not a well-paid profession, and on occasion he needed to work in a sports shop for additional income, but he loved helping athletes, whether they were talented or otherwise. By the fall of 1953 he was training athletes in everything from field events (including javelin, hammer throw, and discus) to distance running. Although he knew a great deal about interval methods and racing techniques, his most valuable insights came from an understanding of what it took to get the most out of an athlete. His experiences during the war, many too terrible to recall, had taught him a lot about willpower. In his opinion, the best coaches had "the ability to make a man go beyond the point at which he thinks he is going to die." Any effort short of this neglected an athlete's full potential.

Stampfl was unlike anyone Bannister had ever met. Partly aware of his history, the miler sensed that this coach truly knew about courage and determination. They had not been talking for very long when Stampfl said quite simply, "You have to train harder." When Bannister said he had medical school to think about, Stampfl replied, "Do both." In his opinion, nothing was impossible. An athlete was restricted only by what he thought he was unable to do. The four-minute mile? Easy. One could run a 3:52 or faster if one truly wanted. It was not about spending endless hours in training—an option not available to Bannister given medical school—but rather the quality of the effort.

Stampfl's certainty and passion fascinated Bannister. By the meeting's end he had agreed to come by the following Friday to run. No other commitment was made.

One September night, at 2:00 A.M., John Landy was running alone along the Dandenong Road. The sodium vapor lights above the road were nearly lost in the fog and cast an eerie orange glow onto the pavement. Landy was ascending a straight uphill stretch on the road when he saw a pair of headlights coming toward him. The car was swerving left and right, the driver obviously drunk. Landy slowed a little and waited for the car to pass, when suddenly it stopped a few feet ahead of him. Although Landy made a habit of running this road, he understood that most people would be suspicious seeing someone along the road in the middle of the night. Apparently this driver was one of them. He rolled down the window, and Landy stepped up to the side of the car.

"Who do you think you are, mate?" the inebriated driver asked. "Bloody Landy?"

Better than admit he was indeed Landy, the miler headed off down the road. Although not every Australian could recognize him, they had most certainly heard of him. Most of the time the reports spoke of his rigorous training. "While you were at the pictures, or square dancing, last Saturday night," wrote Harry Hopman in the Melbourne Herald, "John Landy was doing a 10-mile training run." Word was that the miler had missed only two training sessions since the previous May. Few had any idea of the nature of these sessions, and only those closest to Landy would have believed how rigorous they were if they had known.

From July 21 to September 30, Landy averaged ten 600-yard fast runs daily, at roughly a sixty-six-second quarter-mile pace. In between each run he jogged 600 yards. Since he was studying for his final exams in October and November, he decided to train double his normal session on alternate days. On the off-days he jogged at a five- to six-minute-a-mile pace for half an hour so that he would have more time to study. On the hard days in October he ran twenty 600-yard fast laps with a jog in between each (approximately fourteen miles a night). Every other day in November, having measured out a quarter-mile grass lap on the inside of the Central Park gravel path, he ran twenty 440-yard laps at a sixty-two-second pace, further developing his stamina. Night after night he pushed himself a little bit harder. If his body was a rubber band, he was stretching it just to the point before it snapped. Sometimes he even amazed himself with what he put himself through in a session.

Throughout this training he received letters from Cerutty, advising him on how he should train. Landy refused to answer, let alone listen to his former coach's advice. The outburst the previous year had completely severed their relationship, but still Cerutty wouldn't let it go. He showed up at Central Park, running behind the miler as he trained, shouting that he was an "impostor" and didn't have the "killer instinct" to go anywhere. Landy laughed off the remarks and sped away. Cerutty was having difficulties. His marriage was deteriorating, and his Stotans had left him one by one, many because of his behavior at the Olympics and his attitude toward Landy. Cerutty still hoped his former Stotan would claim the mile record. At the start of the new season Cerutty wrote in his diary that his coaching method would be in great demand if Landy succeeded.

Landy's former coach wasn't the only one with expectations of him. Before his first race on November 21, the headlines cried out, "Landy Back for Big Mile Series" and "Crack Miler Resumes at Olympic Park." In Landy's mind, this race was only an early season tune-up run, and he had to repeatedly deny claims that he was gunning for the "magic mile." Regardless, when he ran a 4:09.2, over seven seconds faster than his first race the previous year, the public smelled the blood of a four-minute mile. Of these expectations Landy said, "The only thing of which I am certain is that I have a greater capacity for punishment this season." A few days later he received a call from Ken Moses at the Argus, informing him that he had been selected as a 1953 winner of the Helms Trophy, an award given to the best athlete from each of the six continents (not including Antarctica). Of the honor, also awarded that year to Gordon Pirie of Europe and Mal Whitfield of North America, Landy said, "Gee, is that true? That's great news," before quickly escaping for a training session. The constant attention, acclaim or not, was beginning to get to him.

After the completion of his finals and two more tune-ups at Olympic Park, Landy was ready to make his season's first fast run. He was in self-described "top condition," and it was exactly one year to the day since he had surprised the world with his first spectacular mile. News of his expected challenge to the four-minute barrier reached Bannister with the Athletics World headline "Landy's 'D' Day" and Santee with a Track and Field News report: "Landy has the best chance of all men today, because he is not dependent on pacemaking. He makes his own, which gives John an advantage over U.S., British and European milers."

For his December 12 race there was a world of difference at Olympic Park over the previous year. The prime minister of Australia was in attendance, and all that week the papers had drum-rolled the event. The Age published a cartoon with Landy racing toward the finish while carrying on his back a man with the face of a clock who was shouting, "4 Min Mile—Faster!" The immense pressure was palpable, and Landy knew that if he felt too tense, he wouldn't run well. He had trained for this day, though, and understood that he had the speed—as long as he didn't force it.

At 3:00 P.M., Landy lined up with three other runners. As he looked out at the crowd and then down at the track, those who knew him could see that he was obviously edgy. But with the limited field and track in perfect condition (the inside lane had been especially reserved for the race), he still had a good shot.

From the start, Landy raced into the lead. Within two hundred yards, it was clear that he was out for the record. John Marks tried to push him through the first half-mile, hanging as near as he could to Landy's shoulders as the "Meteor Miler" clocked a 58.2 first lap and a 60.4 second lap. At that point Marks dropped out of the race, unable to continue, and Les Perry then struggled through the next lap behind Landy, doing what he could to force competition on him. But it was no use. Landy might as well have been in the race alone. In his mind, he was. The clock was his only competition.

Perry stumbled off the track at the three-quarter mark. The bell rang at 3:00.2. Having heard the time, Landy thought he could at least beat Haegg's world record of 4:01.4. It was in the last lap that his hard training would bear its fruit. The crowd was on its feet, clapping loudly. Landy felt pulled along.

Those unofficially clocking him—and there were quite a few who had brought their own watches to the meet—took his split time at the end of the first furlong of the last lap. He had run it in 29.2 seconds, which meant that he only needed to run the last 220 yards in less than 30.6 seconds to break the four-minute mile—and if not that, less than 32 seconds to break the world record.

He continued to run well, maintaining his pace through the back straight and into the last turn. But when he came into the straight, he suddenly felt like the finish line was miles away. A cruel gust of wind seemed to stop him flat, though his legs kept moving. The wind ruined the rhythm of his stride, making it uneven. Within five yards of the tape he slowed noticeably, and when he crossed the line, he had to lean against a Victorian AAA official to keep from falling. His time was 4:02, only one-tenth of a second faster than his best mile the previous year, despite his increased training. His last furlong was run in a slow 32.6 seconds.

Landy shook hands with the prime minister, smiled for a few photographs, and then retreated to the locker room, where he became physically sick. But he quickly came out to speak with the reporters, and his frustration was clear in his words:

No one outside of sport can imagine the grind of years of continuous training. I feel I could go on for 10 years, but I don't think it's worth it. Frankly, I think the four-minute mile is beyond my capabilities. Two seconds may not sound much, but to me it's like trying to break through a brick wall.

Someone may achieve the four-minute mile the world is wanting so desperately, but I don't think I can.

No doubt some of this statement was made to reduce the pressure on him. Privately Landy felt that he still could lower his time in subsequent races. He had finished his exams only two weeks before, and with some more race preparation, he was sure he could run faster.

The next day Landy left for the bush in Tallarook, an area sixty miles northeast of Melbourne, to forget about running for a while. He and several others devoted to butterfly collecting were interested in finding a stenciled hairstreak (Jalmenus ictinus), a butterfly that had not been captured in Victoria in more than half a century. They had a museum record of its presence in Tallarook. Landy savored these trips, net in hand, spying for a particular wing pattern and color. It was a solitary, fulfilling pursuit, one that running had taken him away from more and more.

When reporters asked him about his hobby, he was spare in his answers. Their stories usually characterized him as running hell-bent through the trees swinging a net. In reality collecting butterflies was a much slower, more deliberate process. It was his passion, something separate from running, and he preferred to keep it private. Landy rarely spoke about his hobby with his friends in athletics either. The most that Les Perry knew of his interest was when Landy came into his room to find a butterfly framed in a glass case. Perry had served in New Guinea during World War II and brought back the butterfly because he thought it beautiful. Amazingly to Perry, Landy immediately identified its taxonomical classification.

On his trip to Tallarook Landy managed to find a stenciled hairstreak, with its dark brown wings that had a patch of metallic blue in the middle. It was a triumph that gave him, as he later said, "equal pleasure as running 4:02 for the mile."

A blanket of snow lay over the ground and hung heavy on the trees throughout Mount Oread at the University of Kansas. The campus was quiet; most students had not yet returned after the winter break, and only a few footprints disturbed the snow-laden paths threading through the campus. On the path leading to Memorial Stadium the falling white flakes were just beginning to cover the tracks made by Santee and his coach. From the stadium there was the muffled sound of a foghorn.

Underneath the concrete stadium stands, in a half-lit corridor only a few feet wide, the miler burst down the home straight. He ran at full speed on a dirt track that was twelve laps to a mile and banked around the corners. The corridor was cold and dank with condensation. Easton timed his laps in the middle of the straight. When Santee ran past him and disappeared around the corner, heading toward the backstretch on the far side, Easton readied his foghorn. Along the far side several doors, behind which students lived, opened on to the tracks. If anyone had stayed for the holiday, Santee risked a collision. He was going too fast to react in time.

The horn's cry cut through space, the sound reverberating under the low concrete ceilings. Santee ran unconcerned, feeling strong as he took each stride. One lap to go in his three-quarter-mile trial. He passed Easton at the starting line, where the track was four lanes wide. Santee sensed the time was good. Usually he could judge his pace over a quarter-mile within a second of the stopwatch. When he went out of sight around the corner, the horn sounded again, drowning out the patter of his feet on the dirt. Seconds later he reappeared, sprinting to the finish line, strong, very strong.

After crossing, he slowed and turned back to Easton, who held out his stopwatch. The miler's face was flushed, and the electric heaters placed around the track only made the sweat sear his skin.

"Man, look at this. You're ready. You're ready," Easton said. "If you can run 2:58 in this rat hole, you could have walked it on a real track."

Santee knew he was right. It was early January 1954, two weeks before his four-minute mile attempt during the halftime break in the Pro Bowl, to be held in the Los Angeles Coliseum. He was hot and ready to roll, and Al Franken, who had organized the race for Santee, was expecting great things.

Easton had ratcheted up Santee's training yet again. The goal was for Santee to accustom himself to running a 4:04 to 4:06 mile, so that doing so was more a matter of habit than of strenuous effort. The year before Easton had Santee regularly running a 4:08 to 4:10 mile. He explained to reporters, "The process of running a lot of miles between 4:04 and 4:06 will put Wes in the proper mental state for his major efforts outdoors. A great miler has to feel himself capable of cutting two or three seconds off his time, should the necessity arise." Given the right factors—namely, good competition and fine track conditions—Santee would have a shot at four laps in the record time.

Over the past months, in addition to his training with the team, Santee had included numerous extra quarter-mile runs throughout the week. Some days he ran five quarter-miles in fifty-two seconds each. The type of break he took between quarters made these workouts particularly tough, but Santee knew from hard work. "This was chicken feed," he later said of training compared to the backbreaking labor of his youth. "This background was the difference that I had from all the other athletes in the world at that time."

Instead of slowly jogging a lap before the next fast quarter-mile, Santee finished the quarter, jogged the 110 yards around the curve, sprinted the 110 yards back straight, and then started another fast quarter. "My break between quarters," Santee said, "was no break." After these he did wind sprints from sideline to sideline on the field, putting to shame any workout by the Jayhawk football team. Other times he ran eight to ten quarters in a session, starting the first two at sixty seconds each, and then increasing the speed for the second two to fifty-eight seconds each, then the fifth at fifty-five seconds. If he had trouble getting down to this last time, he shortened the distance run, usually to 220 yards and speeded up. "This keeps you going harder," he said. "Otherwise, you can get slower, slower, and slower—all your life." As the weather worsened through the fall and into the winter, he held many of these sessions alone inside the stadium on the makeshift track. This was in stark contrast to Santee's cross-country sessions, which he ran regardless of the weather. Lately he had been accompanied by Sarge, a reddish-brown German shepherd he had befriended, who met him on the track and followed him along the roads leading from campus.

The payoff from all this training was obvious. In November Santee led his Jayhawk team to victory by placing first in the Big Seven and NCAA cross-country championships. On the last day of 1953, at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, he dashed to a 4:04.2 mile, which was amazing not only because the track was soggy from rain but also because he ran the final lap in a stupefying fifty-five seconds. After the race an Associated Press reporter hit the wires with the following question: "Wes Santee . ..John Landy ... Roger Bannister . ..Who is going to be the first to reach the end of the rainbow and run the fabled four-minute mile?"

According to the press, the only person able to catch Wes Santee was Danna Denning, his newly announced fiancée. Their picture together, wearing matching cowboy shirts, was plastered across papers under the headline "The Girl That Finally Caught Wes." She had traveled down to New Orleans with him, making for the uncomfortable arrangement of Santee sleeping in a room with Easton and Danna with Easton's wife Ada. But it was wonderful to have her watch him race. Danna gave him all the more incentive to do well.

Now, with this fast time trial under his belt, Santee was set for the Pro Bowl run. Just as he was about to leave for Los Angeles, however, Dan Ferris hit him with two major pieces of bad news. First, the AAU had ruled him ineligible for the 1954 National Collegiate Athletic Association track championships because Easton had mistakenly included Santee as a member of the "varsity squad" at the NCAA Championships his freshman year. It was a technicality, since Santee had the right to participate as a member of the University of Kansas "K-Club." Easton had been fighting this judgment for the last two and a half years; it was literally a matter of having ticked the wrong box on the form, but Ferris was not to be swayed, not now. Second, Ferris had decided to continue his investigation into Santee's European trip, and reports had it that Santee risked losing his amateur status as a result. The investigation had already cost him the Sullivan Award, the prize for the year's best amateur athlete, though no evidence of his misdeeds was presented. Ferris simply explained to reporters: "Something is hanging over [Santee's] head....This award is based on sportsmanship and character as well as ability." The situation looked to be getting worse. It was a constant item on the sports pages, equal in coverage to his mile attempts.

Santee and the AAU were heading toward a collision. Increasingly Santee was a threat to the organization's hold on power. Because he sold out the meets in which he participated, particularly with his penchant for publicity and the mile barrier looming ever nearer on the horizon, he had power. The confrontation in Germany had scared AAU officials. Santee might be out of control. Then the Saturday Evening Post published a profile of Santee called "Sure I'll Run the Four-Minute Mile" by Bob Hurt. In the article Santee was quoted as saying, "I'd like to run for about ten more years. But I'm not going to run unless I can make it pay. I wouldn't want to waste ten years." Hurt also wrote that Santee was hoping to earn enough "expenses" from his track meets to buy a farm. Brundage must have read the article and gone ballistic. No amateur under his watch would boast of such a thing. Ferris approached Santee after the article hit newsstands, and the miler denied saying these things. Regardless, the AAU appeared bent on bringing the miler down, at least by a notch or two.

When Santee arrived in Los Angeles and met Franken, he was weighed down by concerns over the AAU probe. But with some of the best American milers set to race against him, including Charlie Capozzoli and Bob McMillen, he had a great chance at the record, AAU investigation or not. Franken was upbeat. "I hope we've set it up so you can do it here," he said.

Early on January 17, the day of the Pro Bowl, Santee left the Ambassador Hotel to take his morning walk. When he stepped out on the grass, his foot sank into six inches of water. It had rained through the night. A few hours later Franken came by to take him to the stadium. He was shaking his head, obviously distraught. "I'm really sorry, Wes. It hasn't rained like this in five years. The track is flooded."

As they drove to the Coliseum, the sun finally appeared in the sky, but it was too late. The track was standing under water. The race was canceled. Santee was devastated. He was in perfect form now. Landy was at the height of his season, and Bannister was sure to run well as soon as he started. Santee's outdoor season didn't begin for several months, and if the AAU had its way, his prospects for competing in any top-flight races then were in serious jeopardy. During halftime he ran a few laps around the football field with Capozzoli and McMillen, waving at the packed stands. If only the AAU officials shared in the enthusiasm for what he was trying to accomplish. Some good luck wouldn't have hurt either.

July 26,1952, Helsinki. Josey Barthel seizes the gold in the 1,500-meter Olympic final. Roger Bannister comes in fourth. Bettmann/Corbis

Bannister balances his work as a medical student with his ambition to be the world's first sub-four-minute miler. Larry Burrows

John Landy relaxing at his East Malvern home. Fairfax Photos

above Wes Santee, grinning at the finish at the 1952 National Championships in California, earns the right to qualify for the 1,500-meter Olympic trials. Bettmann/Corbis

left The "human locomotive," Emil Zatopek, grimaces his way to another Olympic gold medal. Frank Scherschel/Time Life Pictures/ Getty Images

above At Portsea, Percy Cerutty times his two fastest milers, Don Macmillan (left) and John Landy. Courtesy of the Herald & Weekly Times, Ltd.

right Percy Cerutty, in typical attire, holding forth on his running theories. Leonard McCombe/Time Life Pictures/ Getty Images

left Coach Bill Easton holds the stopwatch for Wes Santee in a time trial. Photo by Duke D'Ambra, courtesy of Wes Santee

below Santee (right) and his teammates on their way to class at the University of Kansas. Photo by Duke D'Ambra, courtesy of Wes Santee

On a cold winter afternoon in Kansas, Santee challenges his fraternity brothers in a fourteen-mile race. Photo by Duke D'Ambra, courtesy of Wes Santee

May 6,1954. Chris Brasher sets the pace for Bannister in his attempt at the four-minute mile at Iffley Road, Oxford. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

above Bannister's coach, Franz Stampfl (left), speaking with the famed British journalist John Macadam. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

right Bannister in a state of collapse after his historic run. AP

May 7,1954. The day after the four-minute-mile run, fellow students at St. Mary's Hospital School in London celebrate Bannister's victory with him. Jimmy Sime/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Santee signs an autograph for a young fan. Lisa Larsen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

June 21, 1954. In Turku, Finland, John Landy (second from left) bursts ahead in his bid for the world record. Chris Chataway is at the far right. Denis Johansson is at the rear of the pack. AP

July 26,1954. Chris Brasher, Roger Bannister, and Chris Chataway arrive in Vancouver for the Empire Games. A herd of journalists is there to greet them. Bettmann/Corbis

John Landy (pole position) and Roger Bannister (fifth position) at the starting line for their great race at the Empire Games. Silk/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

A packed stadium watches Landy dominate the early stages of the race in Vancouver. Ralph Morse/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Bannister approaches the finish line in Vancouver, with Landy nowhere in the picture. George Silk/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Roger Bannister wins the Mile of the Century. Ralph Morse/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images