Roger Bannister Quotes

• I sometimes think that running has given me a glimpse of the greatest freedom a man can ever know, because it results in the simultaneous liberation of both body and mind.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I leapt at the tape like a man taking his last spring to save himself from the chasm that threatens to engulf  him.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

• You get very tired, and there was a certain amount of pain and you slow up. Your legs are so tired that you are in fact slowing. If you don’t keep running, keep your blood circulating, the muscles stop pumping the blood back and you get dizzy.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pain, Tired

• When I was about to break a world record and become well known, my mother used to say that for her the important thing was for me to become a doctor – a career which had not been possible in her generation and in her society. Sport was something to be set aside.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Mother

  Tags in Important

• The reason sport is attractive to many of the general public is that it’s filled with reversals. What you think may happen doesn’t happen. A champion is beaten, an unknown becomes a champion.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Happen, Reason

• The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Effort

  Tags in Win

• The Athletic Association competed against the University. So there was an event. You cannot break world records unless it is an established event, and you have three timekeepers, and the whole thing is organized.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Against

• Our house was bombed, and the roof fell in. , and we were quite safe, but it brought home the realization. In two nights 400 people were killed in small town.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Home

• My introduction to track racing was through the background of cross country running, which is not a sport perhaps as popular in America as it is in England.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in America, Country

• My family actually lived in the same village for about 400 years. They had great stability until the last century. People lived and intermarried in small villages.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Family

• My concentration was really on getting to university and becoming a doctor. My parents let me know that school marks were important. Achievement was something which came by hard work.

  My concentration was really on getting to university and becoming a doctor. My parents let me know that school marks were important. Achievement was something which came by hard work.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Important

• My athleticism was really the core to social acceptance, because in those days the overwhelming number of students came from more of a public school background than I did.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Social, Students, Core, Came, School

• Mothers, unless they were very poor, didn’t work. Both of my parents had to leave education. My mother had to work in a cotton mill until 18 or 19, when she took some training in domestic science.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Mother

  Tags in Cotton, Mill, School

• May is a very early time in the year and the weather is usually bad. You cannot run a fast mile race if there is a strong wind, because it makes your running uneven.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Year, Run, Weather, Strong

• Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Expectations

  Tags in Bleak, Parents, Part, Simple

• It’s a question of spreading the available energy, aerobic and anaerobic, evenly over four minutes. If you run one part too fast, you pay a price. If you run another part more slowly your overall time is slower.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Aerobic, Part, Run, Fast

• It had always been a British preoccupation to hold this mile record.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mile, Preoccupation, Hold, Record, British

• If there was the opportunity to climb a mountain, or to go ballooning, or some adventurous activity, I would always be keen to do it. I loved the countryside.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Opportunity

  Tags in Adventurous, Keen

• I’ve always been very impatient. At age 10 I frankly found life boring, and I can remember age 9 having the awful thought, as it seems now looking back on it, A war! That should liven things up a bit!

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Impatient, Awful, Back, Found

• I was playing rugby and the other games English school children do, and there was an event in which races were run, and I won these by a considerable margin.

  Roger Bannister

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Considerable, Run, School

Roger Bannister (31)

Birth:	23rd March, 1929
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Athlete

About

Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister is an English former athlete best known for running the first mile in less than 4 minutes.
In the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Bannister set a British record in the 1500 metres, but did not win the medal he expected. This humiliation strengthened his resolve to be the first 4-minute miler.

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