Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This is a special edition of Countdown commemorating May sixth, nineteen fifty four, the day Roger Banister became the first man in the history of the world to run a mile in four minutes or less. Allegedly, if you have already heard the Friday edition of Countdown, you've already heard all that follows this introduction, so I'll talk to you as usual on Monday. I just felt it was right to take out the news and present this extraordinary sports story by itself, because Roger Banister was the first man ever to run a four minute mile. The hell he was. This is Sports Senate. Wait, check that not anymore.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This is a special edition of Countdown commemorating May sixth, nineteen fifty four, the day Roger Banister became the first man in the history of the world to run a mile in four minutes or less. Allegedly, if you have already heard the Friday edition of Countdown, you've already heard all that follows this introduction, so I'll talk to you as usual on Monday. I just felt it was right to take out the news and present this extraordinary sports story by itself, because Roger Banister was the first man ever to run a four minute mile. The hell he was. This is Sports Senate. Wait, check that not anymore.

This is Countdown with Keith Alberman in sports. This weekend is the anniversary of one of the most famous events in sports history, one of the most famous events in twentieth century world history, and everything you know about it is wrong. Starting at four minutes after six o'clock on the evening of Thursday, May sixth, nineteen fifty four, continuing until the day he died on March third, twenty eighteen, not one day, not one day went by without somebody congratulating Roger Banister on being the first human to run a mile in four minutes or less, the man who broke the four minute mile barrier. We cannot now comprehend what a big deal this really was. Neil Armstrong, time, Charles Lindbergh plus George Washington maybe. The next day, The New York Times published ten different stories about Roger Banister breaking the four minute mile barrier, plus an editorial. An editorial on the editorial page that asked if anybody in world history would ever do it again. Roger Gilbert Banister began the Times on the front page, ran a mile in three minutes fifty nine point four seconds, tonight to reach one of man's hitherto unattainable goals. There's just one problem. Not only was Roger Banister probably not the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes, but there is also a lot of evidence that that record was broken in May of seventeen to seventy by a guy who sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on the streets of London, a guy named Parrot. Sixty nine years later, and this is still the most famous run in the history of the world. May sixth, nineteen fifty four, on an ordinary spring evening at the Ifley Road Track at Oxford University in England. Even as an unfavorable wind worked against him, Roger Banister ran through the tape in three point fifty nine to four and ran directly into not just sports history, but human history, the four minute mile, the first human ever to run that far that fast, like the first man on the moon, no matter how much farther we go. But glory is his, indefinitely, forever, always eternal, immortal Neil Armstrong, But in shorts or there had already been a four minute mile run in seventeen seventy and Banister has no more claim to immortality than do you or I. And this is really a story about bureaucracy supporting bureaucracy and what the experts call recency bias and a lot of racism. And the story should be about a guy who used to sell fruits and vegetables on the streets of London and who ran in his spare time for money in the decade before the American Revolution. And his name was Parrot, as in look, maby, I know a dead parrot when I see one, And I'm looking at one right now.

This is Countdown with Keith Alberman in sports. This weekend is the anniversary of one of the most famous events in sports history, one of the most famous events in twentieth century world history, and everything you know about it is wrong. Starting at four minutes after six o'clock on the evening of Thursday, May sixth, nineteen fifty four, continuing until the day he died on March third, twenty eighteen, not one day, not one day went by without somebody congratulating Roger Banister on being the first human to run a mile in four minutes or less, the man who broke the four minute mile barrier. We cannot now comprehend what a big deal this really was. Neil Armstrong, time, Charles Lindbergh plus George Washington maybe. The next day, The New York Times published ten different stories about Roger Banister breaking the four minute mile barrier, plus an editorial. An editorial on the editorial page that asked if anybody in world history would ever do it again. Roger Gilbert Banister began the Times on the front page, ran a mile in three minutes fifty nine point four seconds, tonight to reach one of man's hitherto unattainable goals. There's just one problem. Not only was Roger Banister probably not the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes, but there is also a lot of evidence that that record was broken in May of seventeen to seventy by a guy who sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on the streets of London, a guy named Parrot. Sixty nine years later, and this is still the most famous run in the history of the world. May sixth, nineteen fifty four, on an ordinary spring evening at the Ifley Road Track at Oxford University in England. Even as an unfavorable wind worked against him, Roger Banister ran through the tape in three point fifty nine to four and ran directly into not just sports history, but human history, the four minute mile, the first human ever to run that far that fast, like the first man on the moon, no matter how much farther we go. But glory is his, indefinitely, forever, always eternal, immortal Neil Armstrong, But in shorts or there had already been a four minute mile run in seventeen seventy and Banister has no more claim to immortality than do you or I. And this is really a story about bureaucracy supporting bureaucracy and what the experts call recency bias and a lot of racism. And the story should be about a guy who used to sell fruits and vegetables on the streets of London and who ran in his spare time for money in the decade before the American Revolution. And his name was Parrot, as in look, maby, I know a dead parrot when I see one, And I'm looking at one right now.

We begin in the pages of a British book dated from seventeen ninety four, which seems to be for you back to the future fans, a kind of Gray's Sports Almanac. The seventeen ninety four tome bears an amazingly modern title The Sports Magazine, and its chronology of top sports events of recent years past includes for the year seventeen seventy this quote seventeen seventy May ninth, James Parrott, a costermonger. A costermonger sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on street. James Parrott, a costuremonger, ran the length of Old Street viz. From the Charterhouse wall in Goswell Street to Shoreditch Church Gates, which is a measured mile, in four minutes. Fifteen guineas to five were betted he did not run the ground in four minutes and a half. So that's it. I am besmirching the immortality of Saint Roger Banister and everything you will see in the newspapers about him over the weekend because of fifty one words about some guy racing against an eighteenth century watch in the year seventeen seventy, and the story wasn't even published until twenty four years later. Seriously, seriously, there is nothing else to say about James Parrott. That snippet from that book is all that researchers have ever found or found out about James Parrott. No obituary, no nothing, no four minute mile, no confirmation he ever existed. Besides which, as every modern sports fan will tell you, the athletes of today are the great greater, greatest of all time goats. If the record book says nobody ran a four minute mile until nineteen fifty four, of course the record books are right. Since seventeen seventy, humans have evolved, health has evolved, training has evolved. Why in seventeen seventy you couldn't even accurately measure a mile, let alone measure exactly four minutes. Actually, agricultural chains, designed to resolve who owned what property and where international borders were had been introduced in sixteen twenty and have proved to be, at worst, only off by around two fifths of an inch over a mile. And if you're saying acra cultural chains, you don't use agricultural chains in sports, let me ask you this, what do they use in National Football League games to check whether or not it's a first down. Okay, we're giving them the accuracy of the agricultural change we still use today in our pro sports. You could measure several blocks of London in seventeen seventy and say from way back there to right over here in front of the church, that is exactly a mile, Guvnor. But how would you time it four minutes? Exactly? What did they use? A really good sundial? No, that has been called a chronometer. The chronometer was perfected by seventeen sixty one. You may know the chronometer as a Swiss watch, or as you might also know it, a rolex. So this parrot runs a mile, or maybe he runs a mile plus two fifths of an inch, and he is timed by several guys with rolllexes, and they all have the same score. He did it in exactly four minutes. If you're still not convinced, if you're still googling Roger Banister's descendants so they can sue this idiot Lderman in his podcast, let me emphasize the part that convinced me that a man named Parrot did run a four minute mile two months and four days after the Boston massacre unleashed the events that would culminate in the American Revolution. Permit me to reread that last sentence about James Parrot's run from Gray's Sports Almanac, I'm sorry, from the Sporting magazine of seventeen ninety four. Quote, fifteen guineas to five were betted. He did not run the ground in four minutes and a half. This guy Parrot bet on himself and got three to one odds, and the five guineas wagered here that would be worth about fifty five hundred dollars in today's money, Meaning this was no eighteenth cent Roger Banister hoping to break a record for Queen and country. This was a guy who did this for money, for the equivalent in winnings of about seventeen thousand dollars, at least as much as his annual income might have been selling fruits and vegetables from a cart. And the way it's phrased in that magazine, we don't know. If more than one bet of fifteen guineas to five was placed, he might have won thirty four thousand dollars or fifty one thousand dollars or five hundred and ten thousand dollars. Because this was for money, the loser or losers who bet he could not finish the race in four and a half minutes had to be satisfied that he had done it in less than four and a half, in this case, in four As we know from our own times, losers now like to claim they didn't lose and will go to any length to convince others they did not lose. But James Parrott got his money, which means that the loser or losers believed James Parrott really rased a mile and did it in four minutes. I'm sold antiquated books and four minute miles run one hundred and eighty three years before the first four minute mile, and costermongers and agricultural change. They may come and go and may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, but money is money, and James Parrott was given the equivalent of his annual salary at least once because somebody who thought he could not do it agreed, Yeah, I was wrong. He really, really, really really did just run the mile in four minutes. Now, of course, the whole account in the book could be wrong. I'm old enough that I was actually on the air doing sportscast on the radio network of United Press International on April twenty first, nineteen eighty when Rosie Ruiz quote one unquote the Boston Marathon. Then it turned out two people had seen Rosy Ruiz burst out of the crowd of spectators on Commonwealth Avenue and start running alongside the men runners. And then it turned out that while she was supposedly completing the nineteen seventy nine New York Marathon, she had struck up a conversation with a freelance photographer on the subway, and the two of them went to the finish line together, and Rosie Ruiz then told officials she had just finished the race. And Rosie Ruiz was a total fraud in two different marathons. Maybe the seventeen seventy four minute mile of James Parrott was just inaccurate. Maybe it was just an inside joke or a misheard rumor or a typo, or he took the subway with Rosie Ruiz, or it was a joke by whoever wrote the book. I've told you the story before about the nineteen twelve Saint Louis Brown's second baseman named Proctor, and nobody could find anything about him. And then it turned out Procter was the Western Union operator who used to make up all the official scorecards at for each game, and one day he decided he always wanted to be a Major League ballplayer, so he put himself in the scorecard. Maybe James Parrott was the author of this the sports magazine or his four minute miles and Monty Python jokes go. Now that's what I call a dead parrot. So if it's a mistake, if it's a typo, if it's his hype job, if it's Rosie Ruiz, if it's low Proctor, Roger Banister is safe. Now he's not because there was also a runner named Powell, and Powell in seventeen eighty seven said he could run a mile in four minutes, and he wasn't messing around. He bet a thousand guineas that he could do it one point one million dollars in today's money. And not only that, but he ran on a famous English running track near Hampton Court, and five days before Christmas of seventeen eighty seven he ran a time trial so that the gamblers could all come over and see what shape he was in, and whether they should bet for him or bet against him. And he did it in the time trial in four minutes and three seconds. And when Powell said the betters could see what shape he was in, he really meant it. He was dedicated to his cause five days before Christmas, and this guy ran a mile naked. All that was in the papers. What happened to the actual race, We don't know that. Nobody has ever found that newspaper. Nobody's ever found an account of the race, only the time trial. So we have to go under the assumption that Powell never did better than four to three. But once again, Roger Banister's four minute mile has withstood the test of time. Uh kinda bah, No, Actually it hasn't. There's also another guy named Weller. Weller was famous enough as a professional runner of the time that when he said he could run a mile on the Banbury Road in Oxford, the newspapers of the day all showed up to preview it, to talk about his two brothers, who were also professional runners, and to cover his attempt on October tenth, seventeen ninety six. And there it is in the papers. Weller of Oxford runs a mile in three minutes fifty eight seconds, not only one hundred and fifty eight years before Roger Banister, but a second and a half faster than Roger Banister. So here's the thing. If somebody really ran a mile in three fifty nine or three fifty eight at the time of the American Revolution, wouldn't that stand out as such an impossible performance, then, such an anomaly so startling that it would be viewed in the same way we would view news coming up on Monday that somebody now had just run the mile in three minutes flat. I mean, if somebody ran the mile in three minutes flat, we would check to see if the guy was a space alien or a time traveler. Wouldn't they have been amazed on October tenth, seventeen ninety six, disbelieving what they had heard, not at all? And that's the second half of the story of the day. Roger Banister did not break the four minute barrier. Research and computers and simulations show that people in the seventeen eighties were consistently running the mile in four minutes and eighteen seconds, four minutes and twenty seconds, four minutes and fifteen seconds. If the info about Weller is right, three minutes and fifty eight seconds. All the time, these numbers were being put up by all kinds of runners, So a four minute mile would have been great, but not out of context, not in seventeen ninety six. And then you have to ask, if it happened, where are all those records. Who were all those four minute eighteen guys and four minute three second guys and three fifty eight guys. What happened to the records? Well, see, that's another scandal. Those eighteenth century records were erased in the nineteenth century because richer, slower people in the nineteenth century wanted to say they held the records, they erased the record book. That part of the story, and the additional sad truth that much of the claims about Roger Banister are really really racist. Next we know Roger Banister really did run a three minute and fifty nine second mile on May sixth, nineteen fifty four in England. It was timed and announced to a waiting crowd by no less a figure than Norris mcwerder, who was later the founder or co founder of the Guinness Book of World Records. And everybody who was there saw history and was part of an impossible dream coming true. And as I mentioned earlier, the next day the New York Times actually had an editorial asking whether or not anybody ever do it again? There is considerable evidence, as I've laid out here, that it was done before, like two hundred years before. But if you are still not convinced that no, no matter what else it was, Roger Banister's three minute fifty nine point four second mile on May sixth, nineteen fifty four was not the first four minute mile. If James Parrott and the naked runner Powell of Hampton Court and Weller seventeen ninety six don't convince you there is also this. There is a sports historian named Peter Radford, himself the bronze medalist in two sprints at the nineteen sixty Olympics in Rome, and he brought the story of Parrot and Powell and Weller to the forefront in the British press nearly twenty years ago. This man found them because he was looking for and finding the records of more than six hundred running races in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Running against the clock, against each other, usually for money, was not only the most popular professional sport in Britain at that time. It was also probably the first, and with so many races and especially winning and losing times recorded, Peter Radford had data to work with. When guys didn't run a four minute mile, how fast did they run it? How fast were these professionals going the average ones over other distances in say seventeen eighty nine, what was the range of times? And his computer looked at all of these races six hundred or so and all of the times and all of the speeds, and it spit out this conclusion. Factoring in the margin of error, Radford wrote, the best possible one mile time would be anywhere between four minutes, thirteen seconds and exactly four minutes. So no, you cannot say James Parrott ran the first four minute mile in seventeen seventy and Weller ran the first sub four minute mile in seventeen ninety six, not with certainty, but I think you can say with certainty that somebody did it before the year eighteen hundred, and that when Roger Banister crashed through the tape at Oxford at six oh four Greenwich meantime on the evening of Thursday May sixth nineteen fifty four, and the track announcer Norris McWhorter announced that Roger Banister's time in the mile was and he gave it a desperately long pause. By all accounts, three minutes fifty I an unfall ten seconds. The moment that happened, Roger Banister became at best the second man to run a mile in four minutes or less, but more likely he was like the twenty second or the two hundred and twenty second. So why why didn't anybody know this? Why did Roger Banister live a life of unceasing, undiminished and sorry, undeserved fame. And that guy Weller We may have run the race a second faster and one hundred and fifty eight years earlier. Why don't we even know Weller's first name? All sports are based on history. Records are made to be broken. The older the record, the louder the break. Who screwed this up? How did we lose Weller in the nooks and crannies of history. We didn't lose them. It wasn't an error. It was deliberate. And that's where this gets to be a crime. Our historian and ex Olympic runner, mister Radford quoted another ancient book, British Rural Sports by J. H. Walsh, which was published in eighteen eighty eight, and in it all the dozens of speed and distant events had two sets of records, one for professionals like Parrot and Powell and Weller, the ones who ran for money, the ones on whom people bet, the ones who bet on themselves. There was that set of records, and then another set of records which was given far more weight and far more importance for the amateurs. By the early twentieth century, Radford wrote, the professional records had been erased from these books, expunged, not forgotten, removed. Why because the professionals were far better than the amateurs. No amateur held the record in the mile. It was all professionals, but the amateurs were in charge. They were the British upper class. They raced not for money but for sport. So the amateurs simply did what the upper class always does in this situation. They erased the records of all the professionals. And oh, by the way, they also erased all records set by women. The British obsession with the superiority of the amateur over the professional If you've ever seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you already know exactly what I mean. It spread throughout the world through the Olympics. That's why Jim Thorpe lost all his gold medals from the nineteen twelve Games. Why the greatest all around athlete ever died in poverty because he had once played minor league baseball to make some money in the summer, and everybody knew about it, and nobody thought they'd hold it against it, but then they held it against him. He was a professional, so his records did not count like James Parrott or fill in the blank here, Powell or I don't remember his first name Weller. So the world record in the mile as of the year eighteen sixty one was credited to a man, an amateur named Matthew Green. Matthew Green was the fastest man in human history four minutes and forty six seconds. Four minutes and forty six seconds. In my twenties, I might have come close to that number. By nineteen thirteen, the International Amateur Athletics Federation had taken over and it recognized runner from Cornell, not me, a different runner from Cornell, as the all time outdoor record holder in the mile four minutes and thirteen seconds, John Paul Jones, one hundred and forty three years after James Parrot, The indoor record in the mile was then held by a man named Abel Kiviat four eighteen and two. I met Abel Kiviat. I interviewed him when he was ninety. I wish I had known about James Parrott. Then I didn't. Abel, and I talked about his roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics. Jim Thorpe got to tell you that story sometime too, But boy Able Kiviat and I could have had a conversation about amateurs versus professionals, and whether or not his record was actually a record. Anyway, you can see where this is all going, and we are almost at our proverbial finish line. I'll conclude the Roger Banister story after this. Not only did history forget the great athletes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries like Parrot and Powell and Weller, who if they did not break the four minute mile, they came damn close and did a lot better than my friend Abel Kiviat did or my Cornell guy John Paul Jones to say another of Matthew Green four minutes and forty six seconds, What did you do stop for lunch? Not only were the remarkable athletes like Parrot and Powell and Weller forgotten, they were buried deliberately. It makes the subject of the Roger Banister four minute mile that everybody celebrates with almost undiminished astonishment every year at this time. It makes all this a little less trivial and a little bit more nefarious and wrong and ugly. Speaking of Ugly and Banister, there is one other component to this story. In the nineteen nineties, having been the god of the four minute mile for four decades, having been celebrated every day for breaking a record that was probably broken one hundred and eighty three years before, Roger Banister was asked about the new generation of runners, those of African descent on September twelfth, nineteen ninety five, Sir Roger Banister explained, quote, it's certainly obvious when you see an all black sprint final that there must be something rather special about their anatomy or physiology which produces these outstanding successes. And indeed there may be, but we don't know quite what it is. Some countries have the good fortune to have a high proportion of black sprinters and hurdlers end quote. Nineteen years later, Banister was still driving right into the Eugenics lane, sounding just enough like Jimmy the Greek Snyder to make you squirm. I love watching people like Usain Bolt, Banister said. The West Africans, of course, have an inbuilt advantage, having been transported as slaves to the West Indies, only the toughest endured. They have astonishing muscle composition, with those fast fibers and superior genes. I will leave it to you and to his maker an assessment of how much of Roger Banister was patronizing, how much was him trying to rationalize how his time had been bettered by nearly ten percent, and how much of it was just sheer racism. But I will note that in what Banister said is another reason to believe that the idea that he was the first human to run a four minute mile is laugh out loud ridiculous. What about all of the runners of color over the centuries, over the millennia in Africa and South America and elsewhere on this globe. By Banister's own disturbing logic. Certainly some of them must have beaten him to breaking the four minute tape. Oh, let me close with this. I don't know for certain who ran the first four minute mile or when. For all we know, it was broken two thousand years ago, and for that matter, so was the present world record of three point forty three point thirteen. Might have been James Parrott or Powell or Weller whose first names we don't know, or someone so lost to history that we don't know their first name or their last name, or their country. We don't know who it was. But no matter what you hear, or see or read in this Weekend Ahead, it's sure as hell was not Roger Banister, which brings us lastly to missus Roger Banister, Moira Elva Jacobson Banister, daughter of a Swedish economist. According to Roger Banister, his wife didn't know a lick about sports, let alone about running, let alone about him running for a time. Roger Bannon once said, my wife thought I had run four miles in one minute. You know, as I've been thinking about this and researching that story, you might as well go with that four miles in one minute. It's no more ridiculous than thinking that Roger Banister was the first man to run one mile in four minutes. Bottom line, Roger Banister did an impressive thing on May sixth, nineteen fifty four. He did not break any barriers nor set any records. And why we celebrate this every year? I do not know. I've done all the damage I can do. Here Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schenel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestra and keyboards by John Phillips Shaneil Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it is written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever and our announcer today was Roger Vanister. No, it's Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad. Everything else is pretty much my fault except the stuff about Banister. That's countdown for this The eight hundred and fiftieth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Do not forget to keep arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We begin in the pages of a British book dated from seventeen ninety four, which seems to be for you back to the future fans, a kind of Gray's Sports Almanac. The seventeen ninety four tome bears an amazingly modern title The Sports Magazine, and its chronology of top sports events of recent years past includes for the year seventeen seventy this quote seventeen seventy May ninth, James Parrott, a costermonger. A costermonger sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on street. James Parrott, a costuremonger, ran the length of Old Street viz. From the Charterhouse wall in Goswell Street to Shoreditch Church Gates, which is a measured mile, in four minutes. Fifteen guineas to five were betted he did not run the ground in four minutes and a half. So that's it. I am besmirching the immortality of Saint Roger Banister and everything you will see in the newspapers about him over the weekend because of fifty one words about some guy racing against an eighteenth century watch in the year seventeen seventy, and the story wasn't even published until twenty four years later. Seriously, seriously, there is nothing else to say about James Parrott. That snippet from that book is all that researchers have ever found or found out about James Parrott. No obituary, no nothing, no four minute mile, no confirmation he ever existed. Besides which, as every modern sports fan will tell you, the athletes of today are the great greater, greatest of all time goats. If the record book says nobody ran a four minute mile until nineteen fifty four, of course the record books are right. Since seventeen seventy, humans have evolved, health has evolved, training has evolved. Why in seventeen seventy you couldn't even accurately measure a mile, let alone measure exactly four minutes. Actually, agricultural chains, designed to resolve who owned what property and where international borders were had been introduced in sixteen twenty and have proved to be, at worst, only off by around two fifths of an inch over a mile. And if you're saying acra cultural chains, you don't use agricultural chains in sports, let me ask you this, what do they use in National Football League games to check whether or not it's a first down. Okay, we're giving them the accuracy of the agricultural change we still use today in our pro sports. You could measure several blocks of London in seventeen seventy and say from way back there to right over here in front of the church, that is exactly a mile, Guvnor. But how would you time it four minutes? Exactly? What did they use? A really good sundial? No, that has been called a chronometer. The chronometer was perfected by seventeen sixty one. You may know the chronometer as a Swiss watch, or as you might also know it, a rolex. So this parrot runs a mile, or maybe he runs a mile plus two fifths of an inch, and he is timed by several guys with rolllexes, and they all have the same score. He did it in exactly four minutes. If you're still not convinced, if you're still googling Roger Banister's descendants so they can sue this idiot Lderman in his podcast, let me emphasize the part that convinced me that a man named Parrot did run a four minute mile two months and four days after the Boston massacre unleashed the events that would culminate in the American Revolution. Permit me to reread that last sentence about James Parrot's run from Gray's Sports Almanac, I'm sorry, from the Sporting magazine of seventeen ninety four. Quote, fifteen guineas to five were betted. He did not run the ground in four minutes and a half. This guy Parrot bet on himself and got three to one odds, and the five guineas wagered here that would be worth about fifty five hundred dollars in today's money, Meaning this was no eighteenth cent Roger Banister hoping to break a record for Queen and country. This was a guy who did this for money, for the equivalent in winnings of about seventeen thousand dollars, at least as much as his annual income might have been selling fruits and vegetables from a cart. And the way it's phrased in that magazine, we don't know. If more than one bet of fifteen guineas to five was placed, he might have won thirty four thousand dollars or fifty one thousand dollars or five hundred and ten thousand dollars. Because this was for money, the loser or losers who bet he could not finish the race in four and a half minutes had to be satisfied that he had done it in less than four and a half, in this case, in four As we know from our own times, losers now like to claim they didn't lose and will go to any length to convince others they did not lose. But James Parrott got his money, which means that the loser or losers believed James Parrott really rased a mile and did it in four minutes. I'm sold antiquated books and four minute miles run one hundred and eighty three years before the first four minute mile, and costermongers and agricultural change. They may come and go and may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, but money is money, and James Parrott was given the equivalent of his annual salary at least once because somebody who thought he could not do it agreed, Yeah, I was wrong. He really, really, really really did just run the mile in four minutes. Now, of course, the whole account in the book could be wrong. I'm old enough that I was actually on the air doing sportscast on the radio network of United Press International on April twenty first, nineteen eighty when Rosie Ruiz quote one unquote the Boston Marathon. Then it turned out two people had seen Rosy Ruiz burst out of the crowd of spectators on Commonwealth Avenue and start running alongside the men runners. And then it turned out that while she was supposedly completing the nineteen seventy nine New York Marathon, she had struck up a conversation with a freelance photographer on the subway, and the two of them went to the finish line together, and Rosie Ruiz then told officials she had just finished the race. And Rosie Ruiz was a total fraud in two different marathons. Maybe the seventeen seventy four minute mile of James Parrott was just inaccurate. Maybe it was just an inside joke or a misheard rumor or a typo, or he took the subway with Rosie Ruiz, or it was a joke by whoever wrote the book. I've told you the story before about the nineteen twelve Saint Louis Brown's second baseman named Proctor, and nobody could find anything about him. And then it turned out Procter was the Western Union operator who used to make up all the official scorecards at for each game, and one day he decided he always wanted to be a Major League ballplayer, so he put himself in the scorecard. Maybe James Parrott was the author of this the sports magazine or his four minute miles and Monty Python jokes go. Now that's what I call a dead parrot. So if it's a mistake, if it's a typo, if it's his hype job, if it's Rosie Ruiz, if it's low Proctor, Roger Banister is safe. Now he's not because there was also a runner named Powell, and Powell in seventeen eighty seven said he could run a mile in four minutes, and he wasn't messing around. He bet a thousand guineas that he could do it one point one million dollars in today's money. And not only that, but he ran on a famous English running track near Hampton Court, and five days before Christmas of seventeen eighty seven he ran a time trial so that the gamblers could all come over and see what shape he was in, and whether they should bet for him or bet against him. And he did it in the time trial in four minutes and three seconds. And when Powell said the betters could see what shape he was in, he really meant it. He was dedicated to his cause five days before Christmas, and this guy ran a mile naked. All that was in the papers. What happened to the actual race, We don't know that. Nobody has ever found that newspaper. Nobody's ever found an account of the race, only the time trial. So we have to go under the assumption that Powell never did better than four to three. But once again, Roger Banister's four minute mile has withstood the test of time. Uh kinda bah, No, Actually it hasn't. There's also another guy named Weller. Weller was famous enough as a professional runner of the time that when he said he could run a mile on the Banbury Road in Oxford, the newspapers of the day all showed up to preview it, to talk about his two brothers, who were also professional runners, and to cover his attempt on October tenth, seventeen ninety six. And there it is in the papers. Weller of Oxford runs a mile in three minutes fifty eight seconds, not only one hundred and fifty eight years before Roger Banister, but a second and a half faster than Roger Banister. So here's the thing. If somebody really ran a mile in three fifty nine or three fifty eight at the time of the American Revolution, wouldn't that stand out as such an impossible performance, then, such an anomaly so startling that it would be viewed in the same way we would view news coming up on Monday that somebody now had just run the mile in three minutes flat. I mean, if somebody ran the mile in three minutes flat, we would check to see if the guy was a space alien or a time traveler. Wouldn't they have been amazed on October tenth, seventeen ninety six, disbelieving what they had heard, not at all? And that's the second half of the story of the day. Roger Banister did not break the four minute barrier. Research and computers and simulations show that people in the seventeen eighties were consistently running the mile in four minutes and eighteen seconds, four minutes and twenty seconds, four minutes and fifteen seconds. If the info about Weller is right, three minutes and fifty eight seconds. All the time, these numbers were being put up by all kinds of runners, So a four minute mile would have been great, but not out of context, not in seventeen ninety six. And then you have to ask, if it happened, where are all those records. Who were all those four minute eighteen guys and four minute three second guys and three fifty eight guys. What happened to the records? Well, see, that's another scandal. Those eighteenth century records were erased in the nineteenth century because richer, slower people in the nineteenth century wanted to say they held the records, they erased the record book. That part of the story, and the additional sad truth that much of the claims about Roger Banister are really really racist. Next we know Roger Banister really did run a three minute and fifty nine second mile on May sixth, nineteen fifty four in England. It was timed and announced to a waiting crowd by no less a figure than Norris mcwerder, who was later the founder or co founder of the Guinness Book of World Records. And everybody who was there saw history and was part of an impossible dream coming true. And as I mentioned earlier, the next day the New York Times actually had an editorial asking whether or not anybody ever do it again? There is considerable evidence, as I've laid out here, that it was done before, like two hundred years before. But if you are still not convinced that no, no matter what else it was, Roger Banister's three minute fifty nine point four second mile on May sixth, nineteen fifty four was not the first four minute mile. If James Parrott and the naked runner Powell of Hampton Court and Weller seventeen ninety six don't convince you there is also this. There is a sports historian named Peter Radford, himself the bronze medalist in two sprints at the nineteen sixty Olympics in Rome, and he brought the story of Parrot and Powell and Weller to the forefront in the British press nearly twenty years ago. This man found them because he was looking for and finding the records of more than six hundred running races in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Running against the clock, against each other, usually for money, was not only the most popular professional sport in Britain at that time. It was also probably the first, and with so many races and especially winning and losing times recorded, Peter Radford had data to work with. When guys didn't run a four minute mile, how fast did they run it? How fast were these professionals going the average ones over other distances in say seventeen eighty nine, what was the range of times? And his computer looked at all of these races six hundred or so and all of the times and all of the speeds, and it spit out this conclusion. Factoring in the margin of error, Radford wrote, the best possible one mile time would be anywhere between four minutes, thirteen seconds and exactly four minutes. So no, you cannot say James Parrott ran the first four minute mile in seventeen seventy and Weller ran the first sub four minute mile in seventeen ninety six, not with certainty, but I think you can say with certainty that somebody did it before the year eighteen hundred, and that when Roger Banister crashed through the tape at Oxford at six oh four Greenwich meantime on the evening of Thursday May sixth nineteen fifty four, and the track announcer Norris McWhorter announced that Roger Banister's time in the mile was and he gave it a desperately long pause. By all accounts, three minutes fifty I an unfall ten seconds. The moment that happened, Roger Banister became at best the second man to run a mile in four minutes or less, but more likely he was like the twenty second or the two hundred and twenty second. So why why didn't anybody know this? Why did Roger Banister live a life of unceasing, undiminished and sorry, undeserved fame. And that guy Weller We may have run the race a second faster and one hundred and fifty eight years earlier. Why don't we even know Weller's first name? All sports are based on history. Records are made to be broken. The older the record, the louder the break. Who screwed this up? How did we lose Weller in the nooks and crannies of history. We didn't lose them. It wasn't an error. It was deliberate. And that's where this gets to be a crime. Our historian and ex Olympic runner, mister Radford quoted another ancient book, British Rural Sports by J. H. Walsh, which was published in eighteen eighty eight, and in it all the dozens of speed and distant events had two sets of records, one for professionals like Parrot and Powell and Weller, the ones who ran for money, the ones on whom people bet, the ones who bet on themselves. There was that set of records, and then another set of records which was given far more weight and far more importance for the amateurs. By the early twentieth century, Radford wrote, the professional records had been erased from these books, expunged, not forgotten, removed. Why because the professionals were far better than the amateurs. No amateur held the record in the mile. It was all professionals, but the amateurs were in charge. They were the British upper class. They raced not for money but for sport. So the amateurs simply did what the upper class always does in this situation. They erased the records of all the professionals. And oh, by the way, they also erased all records set by women. The British obsession with the superiority of the amateur over the professional If you've ever seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you already know exactly what I mean. It spread throughout the world through the Olympics. That's why Jim Thorpe lost all his gold medals from the nineteen twelve Games. Why the greatest all around athlete ever died in poverty because he had once played minor league baseball to make some money in the summer, and everybody knew about it, and nobody thought they'd hold it against it, but then they held it against him. He was a professional, so his records did not count like James Parrott or fill in the blank here, Powell or I don't remember his first name Weller. So the world record in the mile as of the year eighteen sixty one was credited to a man, an amateur named Matthew Green. Matthew Green was the fastest man in human history four minutes and forty six seconds. Four minutes and forty six seconds. In my twenties, I might have come close to that number. By nineteen thirteen, the International Amateur Athletics Federation had taken over and it recognized runner from Cornell, not me, a different runner from Cornell, as the all time outdoor record holder in the mile four minutes and thirteen seconds, John Paul Jones, one hundred and forty three years after James Parrot, The indoor record in the mile was then held by a man named Abel Kiviat four eighteen and two. I met Abel Kiviat. I interviewed him when he was ninety. I wish I had known about James Parrott. Then I didn't. Abel, and I talked about his roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics. Jim Thorpe got to tell you that story sometime too, But boy Able Kiviat and I could have had a conversation about amateurs versus professionals, and whether or not his record was actually a record. Anyway, you can see where this is all going, and we are almost at our proverbial finish line. I'll conclude the Roger Banister story after this. Not only did history forget the great athletes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries like Parrot and Powell and Weller, who if they did not break the four minute mile, they came damn close and did a lot better than my friend Abel Kiviat did or my Cornell guy John Paul Jones to say another of Matthew Green four minutes and forty six seconds, What did you do stop for lunch? Not only were the remarkable athletes like Parrot and Powell and Weller forgotten, they were buried deliberately. It makes the subject of the Roger Banister four minute mile that everybody celebrates with almost undiminished astonishment every year at this time. It makes all this a little less trivial and a little bit more nefarious and wrong and ugly. Speaking of Ugly and Banister, there is one other component to this story. In the nineteen nineties, having been the god of the four minute mile for four decades, having been celebrated every day for breaking a record that was probably broken one hundred and eighty three years before, Roger Banister was asked about the new generation of runners, those of African descent on September twelfth, nineteen ninety five, Sir Roger Banister explained, quote, it's certainly obvious when you see an all black sprint final that there must be something rather special about their anatomy or physiology which produces these outstanding successes. And indeed there may be, but we don't know quite what it is. Some countries have the good fortune to have a high proportion of black sprinters and hurdlers end quote. Nineteen years later, Banister was still driving right into the Eugenics lane, sounding just enough like Jimmy the Greek Snyder to make you squirm. I love watching people like Usain Bolt, Banister said. The West Africans, of course, have an inbuilt advantage, having been transported as slaves to the West Indies, only the toughest endured. They have astonishing muscle composition, with those fast fibers and superior genes. I will leave it to you and to his maker an assessment of how much of Roger Banister was patronizing, how much was him trying to rationalize how his time had been bettered by nearly ten percent, and how much of it was just sheer racism. But I will note that in what Banister said is another reason to believe that the idea that he was the first human to run a four minute mile is laugh out loud ridiculous. What about all of the runners of color over the centuries, over the millennia in Africa and South America and elsewhere on this globe. By Banister's own disturbing logic. Certainly some of them must have beaten him to breaking the four minute tape. Oh, let me close with this. I don't know for certain who ran the first four minute mile or when. For all we know, it was broken two thousand years ago, and for that matter, so was the present world record of three point forty three point thirteen. Might have been James Parrott or Powell or Weller whose first names we don't know, or someone so lost to history that we don't know their first name or their last name, or their country. We don't know who it was. But no matter what you hear, or see or read in this Weekend Ahead, it's sure as hell was not Roger Banister, which brings us lastly to missus Roger Banister, Moira Elva Jacobson Banister, daughter of a Swedish economist. According to Roger Banister, his wife didn't know a lick about sports, let alone about running, let alone about him running for a time. Roger Bannon once said, my wife thought I had run four miles in one minute. You know, as I've been thinking about this and researching that story, you might as well go with that four miles in one minute. It's no more ridiculous than thinking that Roger Banister was the first man to run one mile in four minutes. Bottom line, Roger Banister did an impressive thing on May sixth, nineteen fifty four. He did not break any barriers nor set any records. And why we celebrate this every year? I do not know. I've done all the damage I can do. Here Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schenel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestra and keyboards by John Phillips Shaneil Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it is written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever and our announcer today was Roger Vanister. No, it's Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad. Everything else is pretty much my fault except the stuff about Banister. That's countdown for this The eight hundred and fiftieth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Do not forget to keep arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.