Use Of English Test 3 – The Four-Minute Mile

It is the nature of athletic records that they are broken and their place is taken by new ones. Yet in many sports gamesmatcheshappeningsevents, there is a mark which is not considerablecentralsignificantmajor in itself, but which becomes a legend as athletes try ontrytry fortry out to break it. The most famousknownpublicnoticeable of these is the attempt to run the mile in lesssmallerlowerunder than four minutes.

In 1945, the mile record was broken downbrought downdecreasedlessened to 4 minutes, 1.5 seconds. And there, for nine years, it stuck. Then, in 1954, a medical student entitlednicknamedcalledknown Roger Bannister decided to try and break the record. He had been studyingtryingtrainingrunning for this day since running the mile in 4 minutes, 2 seconds the pastpreviousearlyformer year.

Two other runners set the pace for him, and onwithbyin 250 yards to go he burst ahead for the finish. He wrote thennextafterafterwards: ‘My body had exhausted all its energy, but it gotcontinuedwentran on running just the same. Those latestlaterlastlate few seconds seemed never-ending. I could see the line of the finishing tape. I jumped like a man making a desperate attempt to save himself from danger.’ Bannister’s time was 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. In spite ofButHoweverAlthough this record has been broken on many incidentsoccasionstimestimes since, Bannister’s achievement will never be forgotten.