Bob Phillips, whose imagination was first captured by athletics in the 1950s, reflects on his own experiences and how the sport – particularly middle-distance running – has changed since AW was created

It was a true act of faith for Jimmy Green to launch a monthly magazine called “Athletics” in December 1945. In truth, there was very little athletics to report at the time. World War II had not long ended and hundreds of thousands of men and women in the various allied armed forces were in the process of returning to civilian life. Their priorities centred around reuniting with their families and finding work. Resuming leisure-time activities would have to wait.

The word “leisure” is not lightly used. There was no money to be made in athletics – or, at least, there was not supposed to be. Everyone was expected to be strictly amateur and the leading athletes were allowed only strictly approved expenses. 

Yet the sport had not stopped entirely during war time – in fact, a surprising amount of athletics had taken place in those years – and even world records had been broken. The most spectacular of these happened in neutral Sweden, where two middle-distance runners – Gunder Hägg and Arne Andersson – had set a profusion of fastest ever times between them. The pair set 21 records in all, at ¾-of-a-mile, 1500m, the mile, 2000m, 3000m, two miles, three miles and 5000m, as well as contributing to the 4 x 1500m relay; all of these events being officially recognised. Hägg and Andersson had brought the 1500m down from the pre-war 3:47.8 (by Jack Lovelock, an Oxford University-trained New Zealander, at the 1936 Olympics) to 3:43.0 in four instalments – three for Hägg, one for Andersson – during 1942-1944. They had reduced the time for the mile from 4:06.4, by Britain’s Sydney Wooderson in 1937, to 4:01.3 on six occasions (three each) from 1942 onwards. 

On July 17, 1945, in balmy conditions in the Swedish city of Malmö, Hägg had run his 4:01.3, with Andersson second in 4:02.2. The results elicited feverish chatter about the possibility of four minutes being broken. 

Hägg ran 38 races in 1945, Andersson 34, and crowds flocked to see them as they tirelessly toured the length and breadth of their native land. This competitive idyll soon came to an abrupt end, however. Promoters offered under-the-counter cash enticements, the runners accepted, and eventually the Swedish hierarchy had to take action. The record-breaking pair were banned for life. 

The best attended of all those meetings was in London, at the White City Stadium, where 60,000 spectators packed the ancient grandstands (thousands more were locked outside). Andersson beat Wooderson in a 4:08.8 mile, while Hägg won the two miles race.

As we all now know, the sub-four-minute mile would survive untouched for another nine years, and it was not until the end of 1952 that serious thought was given to it again. John Landy ran a totally unexpected 4:02.1 in Melbourne, and then in June 1953 a precocious 21-year-old American, Wes Santee, was only three-tenths slower in California, while Roger Bannister was artificially paced to a 4:02.0 at London’s Motspur Park.

It was in 1953 that I first took a teenage interest in athletics, which was soon transformed into fervour by a mile race at the White City which broke no records but remains vivid in the memory as one of the most enthralling contests of a lifetime. 

Wes Santee was the illustrious visitor and in the absence of Bannister the British challenge was unexpectedly offered by Gordon Pirie, a bank clerk who ran for South London Harriers but was not thought of at all as a miler as he held the world record for six miles. 

Pirie’s time of 4:06.8 was no threat to Hägg, who was there to see it as an invited guest, but Jimmy Green caught the flavour of the occasion perfectly, writing in AW that Pirie won: “Amid scenes of excitement and enthusiasm never witnessed before at a White City meeting.”

Bannister’s landmark 3:59.4 of May 6, 1954 (no time off school for me to take a Thursday afternoon trip to Oxford) lasted only 46 days until Landy ran 3:57.9 in Finland, but there was absolutely no doubting Bannister’s competitive ability, beating Landy that year in the Commonwealth Games “Mile of the Century” in Vancouver and then winning the European Championships 1500m. As was typical of the era, Bannister promptly retired from competition and turned his attention to the more serious business in life of a surgeon’s calling. 

Australia had had little or no tradition as a miling nation until Landy came along, but his legacy was soon to be taken up. In 1960, I set off by train and ferry to the 1960 Rome Olympics in the company of a clubmate at Watford Harriers, where I was running modest club-level times for 440 yards and 880 yards.
Their metric equivalents were rather disregarded by us insular Britons, but my attitude was soon changed by an almost unknown New Zealander called Peter Snell, who looked more like a rugby union forward than a runner, winning the 800m.

My head was turned further four days later by Herb Elliott, who had won the 880 and mile at the 1958 Cardiff Commonwealth Games and set world records of 3:36.0 for 1500m and 3:54.5 for the mile that summer. In Rome, won Olympic 1500m gold in another world record of 3:35.6.

The marathon, and Abebe Bikila in particular, was also a revelation while, at the other end of the scale, sprinter Wilma Rudolph jolted us out of our chauvinistic stance that women’s athletics was just a decorative sideshow.

In the 1950s, women hadn’t even been allowed to race further than 200m at the Olympics. Inconceivable it was that they could run a marathon, and when a valiant Scotswoman named Dale Greig perversely did so in the Isle of Wight in 1964 AW correspondent Sam Ferris, himself an Olympic silver-medallist, decided that the feat merited only a one-sentence footnote. The glorious Paula Radcliffe was to put the likes of dear old Sam, well meaning but a shade out of touch, firmly in their place by eventually running a quarter-of-an-hour faster than he ever had in the 1930s.

I had found my way into journalism in the early 1960s, being sent to the controversial high-altitude 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, and by the 1990s I had a part-time job as a member of the BBC Radio Five athletics commentary team that meant the Olympics and all the other major Games and Championships filled my diary. 

In 1995, when we were in Gothenburg for the World Championships, presenter John Inverdale asked: “Bob, you’ve seen a lot of middle-distance running. What is the greatest?” Given that Sebastian Coe was sitting next to me, it was an artful inquiry, but I responded in all honesty.

“I saw Elliott win the gold medal in Rome in 1960 in world record time,” I said. There was a short silence, and then someone spoke up: “You can’t beat that”. The voice was Coe’s.

Four years after that I had the pleasure of a return to the Stadio Olimpico in Rome for a Grand Prix meeting, where Hicham El Gerrouj ran the 3:43.13 mile that still stands as the world record. Afterwards I happened to see him near the press area and, summoning up my best French, I told him: “I saw Herb Elliott at the 1960 Olympics in this same stadium. I’ve long thought this the greatest middle-distance performance I have ever seen. Now I’m not so sure.” 

El Guerrouj, ever gracious, replied: “Ah, mais oui, le grand Elliott, quel champion!” During the 1980s, my varied journalistic career had diverted me into writing about other sports so I had to resort to TV replays to keep pace with those stirring deeds of Coe, Steve Cram and Steve Ovett, but I eventually caught up with them at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. 

Cram enlivened a dour, boycott-ridden affair with one of his most brilliant exploits, 1:43.22 for 800m, winning by a dozen metres, and Ovett turned to the 5000m and beat Jack Buckner, who would win at the European Championships in Stuttgart one month later with one of the most graceful performances that anyone could ever hope to see. Elegance had also been of the essence three days previously as Coe led Tom McKean and Cram in a clean sweep of the 800m. 

My 17-year stint with the BBC ended in 2001 and athletics has changed out of all recognition in my 70 years experience of it. In that first issue of AW in 1945 the question was posed: “Will the four-minute mile be a fact?” At the time of writing (I’ve been keeping check) there were 2135 sub-four-minute milers from 84 different countries – 849 from the USA, 274 from the UK, 169 from Kenya.

Am I jubilant at such progress ? Of course I am, but also a shade saddened that what so many of us in our youth regarded as the supreme challenge in athletics is now so commonplace. If there is only one lesson to be learned from following athletics for such a long time it is the chastening realisation that what is extraordinary in one generation is so often an everyday matter in the next.

Bob Phillips has been writing about athletics for more than 60 years and was a member of the BBC Radio Five commentary team at every major Games and Championships from 1985 to 2001. For 30 years he has edited the statistics and history quarterly, “Track Stats”, published by the National Union of Track Statisticians.