Michael Cox: One man's epic milestone is another's treasured secret

Roger Bannister had broken the "four minute barrier".

Opinion

My schoolmate Robin Winston and I decided to wag our divinity lesson in lower four B. It was May 6, 1954, and athlete and Oxford University student Roger Bannister was due to have another go at lowering his time to less than four minutes for the mile.

The Iffley Road Track was just up the road from our classroom at Magdalen College School. It was just too exciting to miss, and what the heck, another six across the nether end would be worth it.

We climbed through the hedge separating the school from Christchurch cricket grounds and scampered across the pitch to another hole in security and onto the Iffley Road track.

The weather was dicey and we heard that perhaps Bannister would give it away. But his pacemakers, Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, apparently persuaded him to give it a go.

The grounds were full and we wormed our way down to the finishing line. There were a few funny looks at these two lads in school regalia, obviously playing truant at three in the afternoon.

They were off.

Frankly I can't remember much more than the excitement, the cheering and shouts of "come on Roger".

But he had done it. Roger Bannister had broken the "four minute barrier". To complete such a feat in 1954 meant running at 15 miles an hour (24km/h), or 14.91 seconds per hundred metres. Roger and his pacemakers had travelled at 22 feet per second for 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds to create a new world record.

I was more concerned with returning to my next lesson in lower four B. My friend Robin was much more adventurous and joined the mob around Bannister on the finish line.

Unluckily for Robin, a photographer from the London Daily Telegraph took a magic picture of Bannister, exhausted arms aloft, and in close proximity, an ecstatic Robin Winston in full shot. It was published around the world.

Now my school has been in place for 500 years and I don't think the mind-set of the master [who only spoke in Latin to his all-male pupils] and his staff had changed much since the original founders, including Sir Thomas Moore, who had set it up "to encourage young men on to the righteous and right path for life".

A sense of humour was not part of that ideal. What happened to Robin I know not. I was just pleased to have escaped the wrath that no doubt made itself felt around his rear end.

My punishment was that although I had witnessed this internationally important event, I could tell no one. Mortifying.

But not quite true. As my father lay dying in 1993 we, like the carpenter and the walrus, talked of many things. Father had been a headmaster of a state school in Oxford with 700 lower decile students. As an aside his great-granddaughter has recently been celebrated as the youngest female principal in New Zealand (the teaching genes hopped a couple of generations).

But as we meandered over the years I mentioned that I had wagged it from divinity class to see the late departed and much lamented doctor, Sir Roger Bannister, break the mile barrier.

He gave me an interesting look. I drew nearer and he whispered, "I also wagged my teaching class that day, wouldn't have missed it for quids."

Michael Cox OBE became a National MP in New Zealand. He adds, "Robin Winston married an old girlfriend of mine. Obviously I was a slow runner."