"That's why people take up sport, isn't it? To surpass what's come before."

Roger Bannister's singular accomplishment 50 years ago Thursday stands as one of the milestones in the history of sport.
In the early evening of May 6, 1954, Mr. Bannister, a 25-year-old medical student at Oxford University in England, became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes...(Bannister) later became one of Europe's leading practitioners of neurology and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1975 for his contributions to medicine, not running...If the record continues to drop at an average of three-tenths of a second per year, Bannister believes that someone will travel the distance in 3-1/2 minutes by the time the 100th anniversary of his landmark is reached.
"Someone will have the mental and physical strength to do it," he says. "That's why people take up sport, isn't it? To surpass what's come before." (Christian Science Monitor)