The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It

· HarperCollins
4.0
21 reviews
Ebook
346
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

In The Perfect Mile, Neal Bascomb, the New York Times bestselling author of Faster, presenst the riveting, true story of the three world-class athletes who individually became the first runners to break the four-minute mile.

There was a time when running the mile in four minutes was believed to be beyond the limits of human foot speed, and in all of sport it was the elusive holy grail. In 1952, after suffering defeat at the Helsinki Olympics, three world-class runners each set out to break this barrier.

Roger Bannister was a young English medical student who epitomized the ideal of the amateur — still driven not just by winning but by the nobility of the pursuit. John Landy was the privileged son of a genteel Australian family, who as a boy preferred butterfly collecting to running but who trained relentlessly in an almost spiritual attempt to shape his body to this singular task. Then there was Wes Santee, the swaggering American, a Kansas farm boy and natural athlete who believed he was just plain better than everybody else.

Spanning three continents and defying the odds, their collective quest captivated the world and stole headlines from the Korean War, the atomic race, and such legendary figures as Edmund Hillary, Willie Mays, Native Dancer, and Ben Hogan. In the tradition of Seabiscuit and Chariots of Fire, Neal Bascomb delivers a breathtaking story of unlikely heroes and leaves us with a lasting portrait of the twilight years of the golden age of sport.

Ratings and reviews

4.0
21 reviews
A Google user
My daughter cautioned me that this book might be most interesting to runners (like her) who could "relate," but she did Bascomb an injustice: he rendered the story of the three men poised to break the four-minute mile thrilling even to this non-athlete. Exhaustively researched, well-written and very exciting -- my one quibble was that she failed to warn me that if I looked at the pictures in the middle, it would ruin the outcome of the climactic race! (Turns out she was stung too.) Besides the moving biographies of the three very different runners, Bascomb throws in a wealth of interesting information about the history of racing. An extremely worthwhile read.
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A Google user
February 1, 2012
read this when i first started running years ago (book had just come out). great history of the sport of running, the people involved. good read!
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Kristopher Shold
January 9, 2016
Superbly written, great storylines. Best non-fiction running book around.
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About the author

NEAL BASCOMB is the national award–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Winter Fortress, Hunting Eichmann, The Perfect Mile,Higher, The Nazi Hunters, and Red Mutiny, among others. A former international journalist, he is a widely recognized speaker on the subject of war and has appeared in a number of documentaries. He lives in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://nealbascomb.com or find him on Twitter at @nealbascomb.
 

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