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AUTHOR’S NOTE

When an author sets out to investigate a legend, and there are few stories as legendary in sport as the pursuit of the four-minute mile, it is initially difficult to see the heroes around whom events unfolded as true flesh-and-blood individuals. Myth tends to wrap its arms around fact, and memory finds a comfortable groove and stays the course. What makes these individuals so interesting – their doubts, vulnerabilities, and failures – is often airbrushed out, and their victories characterised as faits accomplis. But true heroes are never as unalloyed as they first appear (thank goodness). We should admire them all the more for this fact.

Getting past the panegyrics that populate this history has been the real pleasure behind my research. No doubt there have been some very fine articles written about this story, but only by interviewing the principals – Roger Bannister, John Landy, and Wes Santee – and their close friends at the time does one do justice to the depth of this story. Their generosity in this regard has been without measure. These interviews, coupled with contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles as well as memoir accounts by several individuals involved in the events, serve as the basis of The Perfect Mile. With this material, the story almost wrote itself.

I have included collective references for those interested in knowing the sources behind particular conversations and scenes. No dialogue in this book was manufactured; it is either a direct quote from a secondary resource or from an interview. That said, half a century has passed since this story occurred. On some occasions, dialogue is represented as the best recollection of what was in all probability said. Furthermore, memory has its faults, and in those situations where interview subjects contradicted one another I almost always went with what the principal recollected. In those instances when contemporaneous sources (mainly newspaper articles) did not correspond with memory, I primarily went with the former, particularly when there were several sources indicating the same facts. Having inhabited this world for the past eighteen months, aswim in paper and interview tapes, I feel I have been a fairly accurate judge of the events as they happened. I hope that I have served the history of these heroes well.