Sir Roger Bannister meurt à 88 ans (New York Times)

Le New York Times rend hommage au jeun étudiant en médecine qui brisa la barrière mythique du 4 minutes pour le "mile". Au sommet de sa carrière sportive Bannister abandonna la course pour se concentrer à la médecine.

 “He was running on 28 training miles a week,” Sebastian Coe, who set the world record in the mile three different times, once said. “He did it on limited scientific knowledge, with leather shoes in which the spikes alone probably weighed more than the tissue-thin shoes today, on tracks at which speedway riders would turn up their noses. So as far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great runs of all time.”

Tall and lanky with a long, forceful stride and a blond head that usually bobbed above his competitors’ in a race, Bannister was a gentleman athlete with a philosophical turn of mind. He was a quiet, unassuming champion, a character of a type that has seemingly vanished in the modern era of sports celebrity. Sports Illustrated called him “among the most private of public men, inexhaustibly polite, cheerfully distant, open and complex.”

  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/obituaries/roger-bannister-dead.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news