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Title: The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It by Neal Bascomb ISBN: 0-618-39112-6 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 14 April, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.89 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Thrilling Account of Breaking the Big Barrier
Comment: Our systems of measurements are arbitrary; a mile is an artificial distance, and a minute is an artificial time. But everyone has heard the phrase "the four minute mile." It might be arbitrary, but as a footrace there is also some symmetry to it. Four minutes, four times around the quarter mile track, a strict fifteen miles per hour. For years, the four minute mile was a monument as an impenetrable barrier, and when Roger Bannister broke the barrier fifty years ago, the whole world took notice. It was Bannister's victory, of course, and often he was depicted as a lone athlete out to break the record, but there is more to the story. In _The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less than Four Minutes to Achieve It_ (Houghton Mifflin), Neal Bascomb gives a full and exciting history of events leading to one of the most impressive accomplishments in sports.
Necessarily, the other two runners, Australian John Landy and American Wes Santee are mere also-rans, but their efforts were heroic, and as Bascomb makes clear, there may have been only matters of happenstance, like weather, that kept them from being first. Like Bannister, they had failed to get medals in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, and returned home determined to take the four minute mile upon their return home. Bannister was restricted by his medical studies; he could not train for hours every day, as the others did, so he had to concentrate his training into exhausting short daily bursts. His medical background helped, however, in researching the effects of exercise, giving him scientific assurance he could do it. On 6 May 1954 Bannister made a real try at the barrier. He had, by that time, taken on a coach, and he had two friends to serve as pacemakers. The breaking of the record was a worldwide sensation.
It is not, however, the perfect mile of the title. Even the jubilant British press questioned just how cricket it was to use pacemakers and not sheer competition, and the three aspirants in the quest had never run against each other. The three were scheduled to run in the Empire games in Vancouver three months after Bannister's epochal run, which would satisfy everyone as to who was the fastest miler. The only pacemakers would be the runners themselves. There were heartbreaking complications that prevented Santee from running; they had to do with US athletic authorities who persecuted and banned him because he allegedly breached his amateur status. Both Bannister and Landy did under four minutes in Vancouver in an exciting race, thrillingly described here. This was a classic victory. There was no hint of doping, television did not make it into an extravaganza, and the competitors were not millionaires. The result made front page headlines all over the world; what subsequent footrace has done that? _The Perfect Mile_ thus takes us back to a simpler time, but this is a welcome story of timeless heroes.
Rating: 5
Summary: Seabiscuit meets Chariots of Fire
Comment: May 6, 1954. On that day a half-century ago the 4-minute mile was finally, irrevocably broken. They said it couldn't be done, that it was beyond the scope of human endurance. Even as the 20th century wound down, this penultimate event was treated with a hallowed reverence; Sports Illustrated chose the 4-minute mile--the perfect mile--as The Greatest Sporting Achievement of the Century.
On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the perfect mile, and with the Summer Olympic Games in Athens only weeks away, THE PERFECT MILE by Neil Bascomb couldn't be any timelier. And with the movie adaptation of THE PERFECT MILE currently in production with Universal, Spyglass--the same studio that produced a little movie called SEABISCUIT--expect this book to have a loooooong shelf life.
Speaking of SEABISCUIT, Neil Bascomb has a charismatic narrative voice not unlike Laura Hillenbrand's. In THE PERFECT MILE, he weaves together the biographies of three amazing and strikingly different athletes--Bannister, the Oxford-educated amateur sports-for-sports-sake archetype with his come-from-behind running style; Landy, the Aussie with the unorthodox training methods, and a relentless wire-to-wire front runner; and lastly Santee, the American, a tough Kansas-born farmer's son that history forgot.
Three men, one quest: The Perfect Mile.
READ THIS BOOK, PEOPLE!!!
Rating: 5
Summary: A book that transcends sports
Comment: Finished The Perfect Mile last night. It's one of the best
sports books I've ever read. You will enjoy it whether you ran track, jog to keep in shape, or just plain enjoy a quality biography. It's very well written and researched. You will find yourself pulling for all three runners in their quest for the four-minute mile (Bannister, Landy, Santee). Do yourself a favor, read this book. It's a must read.
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Title: The Four-Minute Mile by Roger Bannister ISBN: 155821027X Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Bannister and Beyond : The Mystique of the Four-Minute Mile by Jim Denison ISBN: 1891369350 Publisher: Breakaway Books Pub. Date: 15 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Once a Runner by John L. Jr. Parker ISBN: 0915297019 Publisher: Cedarwinds Publishing Company Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Sub 4:00: Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest Mile by Chris Lear ISBN: 157954746X Publisher: Rodale Press Pub. Date: 18 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Four-Minute Mile, Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition by Roger Bannister ISBN: 1592285813 Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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