Contrast Roger Bannister with our modern day sports heroes. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was disqualified and stripped off his 100-meters Olympic gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics after testing positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance.

These days, lanky singles-hitting baseball players suddenly bulk up, and with muscles bursting out of biceps start hitting home runs! If caught, their innocent answer is: "I did not know the substance I was using (as a performance-enhancer) was banned!"

In the world of track and field, in all probability the first drug abusers were Russian sisters, Tamara Press (shot putter) and Irena Press (100 metre hurdler) in the 1960s, and the East German swimmers (such as Kornelia Anders) in the 1970s. The drug detection technology was not advanced enough to catch the cheaters, who also used masking substances to make detection almost impossible. One hint was that all these females spoke with a man-like baritone. When this was pointed out to the East German swimming coach at the Montreal Olympics of 1976, he famously replied, "They are swimmers, not singers!"

By contrast, sports was squeaky clean during Roger Bannister's time. By 1954, it was generally acknowledged that only two barriers remained for human beings to conquer: Mount Everest and the 4-minute mile. New Zealander Edmund Hillary, along with Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing, had just conquered Mount Everest. With laconic New Zealand humour, this is how Hillary had informed the world of his conquest: "We knocked off the bastard!" That rather Spartan summation became Bannister's inspiration as he approached his moment in history.

There was a widespread belief in 1954 that the human heart and lung could not withstand a sub 4-minute mile run, and that the run would kill the person attempting it! That Swede Gunder Haegg's 1945 record (4:01.4) stood for nine years lent credence to the theory. Besides, Roger Bannister was not necessarily the favourite to go sub-four minutes first. After all, Bannister had miserably failed to win any medal in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics 1500 meters run. Australian John Landy and the American Wes Santee were considered the more likely duo. Both were running fast. After his college recessed for summer, Santee was planning on attempting the sub-four minute mile on the fast tracks of California. Landy, too, was headed west; his tryst with destiny was to be on the fast track of the Helsinki Olympics. Twenty-five year old Roger Bannister had little time to waste. Unlike other runners, however, Bannister trained aerobically on a treadmill and weight-trained to build up his muscles.

Because Landy and Santee could attempt the sub-four minute mile any day, Bannister did not have the luxury of postponing his own attempt at the Iffley Road track of Oxford University. He was lucky. Bannister's pacemakers were his friends, fellow Olympians, medalists and world class runners Christopher Brasher (3000 metre steeple chase) and Christopher Chataway (5000 metres). With Hillary's "Let's knock off the bastard!" as the pep rally, the three friends' rendezvous with destiny was underway.

At the gun, fired around 6 pm, Brasher went right for the lead, as planned, and Bannister settled comfortably behind him. Ignoring Bannister's plea to go faster, Brasher took the field through the first lap in 57.5 seconds. Perfect! The two-lap, half way split was 1:58. Perfect, again! Chataway took over at the beginning of the third lap, and with the crowd of 1000 cheering wildly, led Bannister through the three quarter mile in 3:00.7. Not so perfect! This meant that a tiring Bannister had to cover the last quarter mile in less than 59.3 seconds. It was Bannister's race against time now. On the backstretch, Bannister swept by Chataway and accelerated into the cool, damp evening. "I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do something supremely well," Bannister wrote in "First Four Minutes," his autobiography. He knew that the whole world was waiting for him behind the tape. After bursting through the finish line, Bannister collapsed into the arms of the track officials. "I felt like an exploded flashlight," he recalled.

It was so close that no one knew whether the barrier had been broken. As each timers' time was being tabulated, the crowd awaited the time with expectation and apprehension in pin drop silence. Bannister's roommate and friend at Exeter College, Oxford, Norris McWhirter (one of the brewery Guinnesses, who co-founded the Guinness Book of (World) Records in 1955 and died last year) was the announcer at the meet. McWhirter announced: "Ladies and gentleman, here is the result of event No. 9, the one-mile. First, No. 41, R. G. Bannister of the Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which, subject to ratification, will be a new English native, British national, British all-comers, European, British Empire, and world record. The time is three minutes . . ." And the crowd's roar drowned the rest of McWhirter's announcements. For the record, Bannister ran the last quarter in 58.7 seconds and his mile time was 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.

Six weeks later, John Landy broke Bannister's record (3:58:0). A few months later, in the Mile of the Century, Bannister beat his bitter rival John Landy (3:58.8), at the Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada. After winning a European gold medal in the 1500 meters the same year, Bannister quietly retired from track to become a physician and researcher. American Wes Santee was so devastated by being beaten to the first sub-four minute mile by Bannister that he quit track without ever running a sub-four minute mile. To this day, John Landy, the gentle Australian, regrets not having run the first sub-four minute mile.

Since Roger Bannister's unprecedented feat in 1954, over 955 runners have gone under four minutes over 4,700 times. Among those runners are fathers and sons, and brothers. Former mile record holder and 1976 Montreal Olympic gold medalist in the 1500 meters, John Walker of New Zealand, has run under 4-minutes over 100 times! Fourteen world record holders have set nineteen records in the sub-four minute mile. If the current world mile record holder, Hicham el-Guerrouj of Morocco (gold medalist in the 1500 and 5000 meter races in the 2000 Athens Olympics), were to have raced Roger Bannister of May 6, 1954, Hicham el-Guerrouj (3:43.13) would have beaten Roger Bannister by 120 yards!

Yet, the mystique of Roger Bannister and the first sub-four minute mile persist. (Roger Bannister is now Sir Roger Bannister; the Queen knighted him in 1975). Sir Roger broke the Barrier. Everyone follows in his wake. During the writer's days at Oxford in the 1970s, he could not believe that he was running on the same hallowed Oxford University track at Iffley Road that Sir Roger Bannister had immortalised! Even to this day, the first question serious middle distance runners ask each other is: "Have you run under 4 minutes?" Runners are still judged by the gold standard that the 25-year old Oxford graduate set in 1954.