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 3:59.4
The Quest For The Four-Minute Mile
By Bob Phillips - 2004 First Edition
This
book is a special import purchase by Running Past from our
friends at Parrs Wood Press in Manchester, England. It has
received very limited distribution in the US.
The
following is from the publisher's press release:
In
2004 the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous achievements
in the entire history of sport will be celebrated - Roger
Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile.
No athletics event has aroused such excitement. No single
performance has attracted such feverish worldwide attention.
Such is the magic of the mile that it remains the only non-metric
distance which is still recognised for official World-record
purposes.
The record has now been taken down to 3 minutes 43.13 seconds
by Hicham El Guerrouj, of Morocco, and he would have left
Bannister 120 yards behind, had they raced each other at their
best. But is El Guerrouj, competing in an age of rampant professionalism,
really a better miler than Bannister, who fitted in his training
and racing between hospital duties as a doctor? Is Bannister
better than Walter George, who ran a time of 4 minutes 12.75
seconds in 1886 which it was thought would never be beaten?
Bannister and George, together with Sydney Wooderson, Derek
Ibbotson and then Coe, Cram and Ovett, have established Britain
in the forefront of the mile event over the years. But four
Americans, three New Zealanders, two Australians, two Swedes,
a Finn, a Frenchman, an Algerian, a Tanzanian and now a Moroccan
have each in turn held the World record. No other event has
grasped such imagination of runners in every corner of the
globe.
The mile was first contested seriously in the 17th Century.
Running footmen raced on behalf of their lords and masters
for wagers. There are stories of four minutes or faster having
been run on public highways in the late 18th and early 19th
Centuries. Of course, they cannot be true... or can they?
The story of this fascinating event is told in vivid detail
in a book to be published next year, written by Bob Phillips,
one of the world's foremost athletics historians, who has
seen all the great milers of the last half-century in action
and talked to world record-holders of an earlier era.
This
is a substantial, large format paperback book.
288 pages. 60 photographs.
$21.00
plus $2.00 shipping.
Please e-mail us to reserve a copy for you.
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May 4
by cover artist Andy Yelenak
