The thing about sport is that it’s constantly moving on, constantly improving, constantly evolving.

Records that were set in previous decades are surpassed and, almost always, entirely forgotten.

There’s one record, however, that despite not withstanding the test of time in the record books, has certainly stood the test of time within athletics folklore.

70 years ago tomorrow, athletics’ most famous record was broken.

On the 6th of May 1954, Roger Bannister did what had been deemed by many to be impossible; he ran a sub four-minute mile.

It’s astonishing how, even seven decades on, the breaking of this record still evokes so many emotions.

Of the thousands of world records that have been broken since, none have achieved similarly legendary status, and this says it all about the magnitude of his achievement.

There’s not a single part of the story of the first-ever sub four-minute mile that doesn’t fascinate me.

From the build-up to the attempt to the aftermath to Bannister himself, it’s an astonishing tale and likely contributes to the longevity of the adulation of the record.

The quest to run a four-minute mile had been on-going for literally centuries prior to Bannister’s arrival on the athletics scene.

There are reports from the 1880s, and even before, of athletes chasing the record.

However, it was in the mid-twentieth century that breaking it began to be taken more........

© Herald Scotland