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I stumbled onto The First Four Minutes completely by chance, I have no particular interest in track athletics nor in 50-year-old world records; it was a happy accident that this book caught my attention. A brief glance at the text, and the photographs depicting important events from the book, convinced me that an impulse buy was in order.
The book tells of Roger Bannister's athletics career in, mostly, chronological order; starting with his childhood love of running and finishing with his retirement from international competition after the Empire Games in 1954. Along the way Bannister describes how his running prowess earns peer respect at school, and later helps him to find his feet as a young freshman at university in Oxford in the 1940s.
The book's charm lies in Bannister's ability to infuse the text with the pleasure he takes in running. It is clear that Bannister loved to run not only for the satisfaction inherent in the sport but also for the opportunities running offered him and the balance it gave to his academic and professional life. For Bannister, the challenge of combining international athletics with his academic work as a medical student increased his enjoyment of sport rather than limiting the time he could dedicate to training; indeed he laments the increasingly mechanistic and life-consuming approach to running favoured by some of his competitors. Bannister takes his cue from the ancient Greeks in the philosophy that well-being demands both a healthy mind and a healthy body. Bannister was also known for the fact that he was self-coached and through the book he promotes mental self-sufficiency as an important part of the value of sport.
In some ways Bannister seems keen to promote himself as the kind of 'gentleman athlete' depicted in Chariots of Fire preferring not to train too much or to employ a coach. He seems to overplay an air of laissez-faire in his attitude running which is perhaps a weakness of the book.
The First Four Minutes is a pleasure to read. Bannister's prose is conversational and informative, combining elegant descriptive language and an exciting narrative. The races are particularly enthralling; it was difficult to read some of the passages fast enough, and was always a surprise to look back and realise how many pages had passed by in a flash. The updated sections in the new edition include a new introduction, an epilogue about Bannister's life after international running and discussing issues in modern sport and several letters written by Bannister in the few years following his world-record. These are well worth reading but the main attraction of the book must be the original text.
Well worth a read if you enjoy sporting autobiographies.
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