How can the 4th place finisher in the Olympic 1,500 meter run teach us more about mindset than the gold medal winner of the race?
Subject: Mindset - The Sub Four-minute Mile
Event: Roger Bannister breaks the four-minute barrier, 1954
It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ. -Roger Bannister
Two years before he became immortal by breaking the four minute barrier on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister suffered a painful defeat that might have caused him to quit running altogether.
Bannister was running as England’s entry in the finals of the 1,500-meter run at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, and he was the favourite to win. Unfortunately, because Olympic officials added a semifinal race between the qualifying heats and the final, Bannister was not fully prepared to give his peak performance in the final. He finished fourth, just missing a medal. The sting of losing hurt Bannister, but instead of quitting running to pursue a medical degree, he set his sights on a new goal: to do the impossible.
The mile record had stood at 4 minutes and 1.3 seconds for nine years, and many doctors and scientists believed that a sub-four-minute mile was a physical impossibility. Bannister, a medical student himself, was one person who believed it could be done. He also knew that the man who could do it would be remembered long after everyone had forgotten about anyone who ever won or would win an Olympic gold medal.
Like most mornings, Thursday, May 6, 1954, found Bannister at a London hospital where he was working to earn his medical degree. As he made his rounds, he thought about the mile that was scheduled for that evening in Oxford, hoping that conditions would be right for his record-breaking attempt.
As he took a train to Oxford for the race, he worried that there was too much wind. However, by the time he got to the starting line at 6:00 PM the wind had died down, and he was determined to go for the record. With two pacer runners helping him make the right time for each of the four laps, Bannister finished the third lap in 3 minutes 0.5 seconds, so he knew that his last lap needed to be 59 seconds. Known for his strong finishing kick, Bannister flew past his last pacer with just over a half-lap to go. Looking back on his run, Bannister remembered the agony of approaching the finish:
The faint line of the finishing tape stood ahead as a haven of peace, after the struggle. The arms of the world were waiting to receive me if only I reached the tape without slackening my speed. If I faltered, there would be no arms to hold me and the world would be a cold, forbidding place, because I had been so close. I leapt at the tape like a man taking his last spring to save himself from the chasm that threatens to engulf him.
As Bannister crossed the tape, the stopwatch stopped at 3:59.4. Only 1,200 people were in the stadium that day to watch the race, but the next morning newspapers around the world announced Bannister’s Everest-like accomplishment.
Bannister’s story typifies what psychologist Carol Dweck calls mindset: the attitudes we have about talent and intelligence. A person with a fixed mindset who experienced the kind of failure that Bannister did in the 1952 Olympics might have never rebounded. While people with a fixed mindset allow failure to define them, people like Bannister who possess a growth mindset use failure as a springboard, an opportunity to learn more and to work harder.
Bannister continued to run for a few months after his record achievement, but he was eager to begin his career as a neurologist. He might have continued to run and attempted to win the gold medal in the 1956 Olympics that had eluded him in 1952; instead, he took the lessons he had learned about hard work and perseverance on the track and applied them to medicine.
Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: What major setback preceded Bannister’s quest to break the 4-minute mile? How does Bannister’s story relate to the concept of Mindset?
Challenge - Four Differences: What are four differences that you could list that reveal how a growth mindset is different from a fixed mindset?
Sources:
1-Litsky, Frank and Bruce Weber. “Roger Bannister, First Athlete to Break the 4-Minute Mile, Dies at 88.” The New York Times 4 March 2018.
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