And Now the One-Mile Dash

TRACK & FIELD

The time may be near when track officials will have to reclassify the mile as a dash instead of a run. In the 13 years since Britain's Roger Bannister opened the floodgates by running a 3-min. 59.4-sec. mile, no fewer than 84 athletes have cracked the mythical 4-min. "barrier"--running a total of 278 sub-4-min. miles. Tops among them, of course, is Jim Ryun, the University of Kansas junior who at 20 is already the fastest middle-distance runner of all time. Last month in Bakersfield, Calif., Ryun lowered his own world record for the mile to 3 min. 51.1 sec. Two weeks ago in Los Angeles, he zipped through 1,500 meters--120 yds. short of a mile--in 3 min. 31.1 sec., to clip 2 1/2 sec. off the seven-year-old mark set by Australia's Herb Elliott. Experts estimate that Ryun's time for 1,500 meters is the equivalent of a 3-min. 48.5-sec. mile.

Obviously somebody is going to break 3 min. 50 sec. for the mile--probably Ryun and possibly this season. Track Coach Bill Bowerman, who has turned out nine sub-4-min. milers at the University of Oregon, predicts that Ryun may lower the record all the way to 3 min. 45 sec. before he is through. But hardly anybody thinks that will give Jim any permanent place in the record book. Advances in nutrition, training methods, equipment, medicine and psychology undoubtedly will produce even faster runners than Ryun. The man who started it all, Roger Bannister, now 38 and a London neurologist, believes a 3-min. 30-sec. mile is in the offing. And then? "That depends," says Bannister, "on how long people think it is worth going on trying."

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