The 4 minute mile

It was such a different age. An age when true amateurs contested many of the sports which today are the business of the professional and with it, the distortion that money brings.
Roger Banister ran the mile in 3.59.04, he breached a barrier that some thought was beyond human capability, in a style that reflected the whole amateur ethos of the time. Banister, Chis Chataway and Chris Brasher all had full time jobs, running was a part time exercise, something you did after work training in the dingy weather with no reward other than a medal. No high altitude training, no special food supplements, a pair of running shoes which a runner in today's the also-runs would deem unsuitable and a track which would fail to do service in the most impoverished corner of Africa.
John Landy the Australian had been lowering the record closer to the 4 minute barrier and was Banisters main rival.  Landy trained in the sunshine of Aussie, ate the diet of an Aussie and was odds on the one to break the record.
Watching the film of the event at Iffley Road athletics track in Oxford one had to realise how different athletics is today. Banister, Chataway and Brasher all worked as normal on the Saturday morning of the event, each getting to the track on bus, or in Chataways case he cycled there and they changed on the track. No Mo Farah 5 star treatment, no coddling in the run up to the event, it all belonged to a different time.
A time when Stan Mathews, the best footballer of that generation was paid £20 a game, a time when people and their stars were made of the same stuff in terms of income and lifestyle.
Money, sponsorship and television rights has made today's athletes and footballers millionaires. It has distanced them from the lives of ordinary people who now only in their dreams could contemplate, not competing but not even meeting these superstars who live in yet another bubble of exclusivity which defines the 21st century.