Roger Bannister
Roger Bannister
Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister CBEis an English former middle-distance athlete, physician and academic, who ran the first sub-four-minute mile...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionRunner
Date of Birth23 March 1929
athlete school hard-work
My concentration was really on getting to university and becoming a doctor. My parents let me know that school marks were important. Achievement was something which came by hard work.
sports essence important
The essence of sports is that while you're doing it, nothing else matters, but after you stop, there is a place, generally not very important, where you would put it.
america impossible walks
It seems quite impossible to walk in America.
mind results concentration
Without the concentration of the mind and the will, performance would not result.
quality-not-quantity jogging three
I trained for less than three-quarters of an hour, maybe five days a week - I didn't have time to do more. But it was all about quality, not quantity - so I didn't waste time jogging, ever.
sports moving athlete
I enjoy singing, and the instruments which truly move me are the horn, the trumpet and the cello.
running athlete shoes
Your spikes, which were really quite long then, would catch the material of the track and your shoe would get heavier. I was simply filing them down and rubbing some graphite on the spikes. I thought I would run more effectively.
running pain athlete
You get very tired, and there was a certain amount of pain and you slow up. Your legs are so tired that you are in fact slowing. If you don't keep running, keep your blood circulating, the muscles stop pumping the blood back and you get dizzy.
sports mother athlete
When I was about to break a world record and become well known, my mother used to say that for her the important thing was for me to become a doctor - a career which had not been possible in her generation and in her society. Sport was something to be set aside.
athlete athletic three
The Athletic Association competed against the University. So there was an event. You cannot break world records unless it is an established event, and you have three timekeepers, and the whole thing is organized.
sports running country
My introduction to track racing was through the background of cross country running, which is not a sport perhaps as popular in America as it is in England.
athlete years people
My family actually lived in the same village for about 400 years. They had great stability until the last century. People lived and intermarried in small villages.
athlete luxury athletic
Athletics is a luxury.
athlete hard-work simple
Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury.