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If there was the opportunity to climb a mountain, or to go ballooning, or some adventurous activity, I would always be keen to do it. I loved the countryside.

Roger Bannister

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Roger Bannister
Age: 88 †
Born: 1929
Born: March 23
Died: 2018
Died: March 3
Athlete
Athletics Competitor
Autobiographer
Middle-Distance Runner
Neurologist
Physician
Harrow
Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister
Sir Roger Bannister
Roger Gilbert Bannister
Activity
Loved
Countryside
Sports
Keen
Opportunity
Adventurous
Always
Climb
Would
Climbs
Athlete
Mountain

More quotes by Roger Bannister

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I think that is a universal adolescent feeling, trying to find your place. The adolescent who is perfectly adjusted to his environment, I've yet to meet.
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I couldn't touch my toes with straight legs, but I could break 4 minutes for the mile.
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Our house was bombed, and the roof fell in. We were sitting under the stairs of the basement, and we were quite safe, but it brought home the realization. In two nights 400 people were killed in small town.
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My introduction to track racing was through the background of cross country running, which is not a sport perhaps as popular in America as it is in England.
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When I was about to break a world record and become well known, my mother used to say that for her the important thing was for me to become a doctor - a career which had not been possible in her generation and in her society. Sport was something to be set aside.
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My family actually lived in the same village for about 400 years. They had great stability until the last century. People lived and intermarried in small villages.
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Whether we athletes liked it or not, the 4-minute mile had become rather like an Everest: a challenge to the human spirit, it was a barrier that seemed to defy all attempts to break it, an irksome reminder that men's striving might be in vain.
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Without the concentration of the mind and the will, performance would not result.
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I was playing rugby and the other games English school children do, and there was an event which was planned in which races were run, and I simply just won these by a considerable margin
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The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.
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I came from such a simple origin, without any great privilege, and I would say I also wanted to make a mark. It wasn't until I was about 15 that I appeared in a race.
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We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves...The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, 'You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.' The human spirit is indomitable.
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Your spikes, which were really quite long then, would catch the material of the track and your shoe would get heavier. I was simply filing them down and rubbing some graphite on the spikes, so that I thought I would run more effectively.
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The reason sport is attractive to many of the general public is that it's filled with reversals. What you think may happen doesn't happen. A champion is beaten, an unknown becomes a champion.
Roger Bannister
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You get very tired, and there was a certain amount of pain and you slow up. Your legs are so tired that you are in fact slowing. If you don't keep running, keep your blood circulating, the muscles stop pumping the blood back and you get dizzy.
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I was always a great bundle of energy. As a child, instead of walking, I would run. And so running, which is a pain to a lot of people, was always a pleasure to me because it was so easy.
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It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ.
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Every time I ran the mile I was aware of my own weakness, there was some opponent who could give me a hell of a fight, so I never went into a race with a sense of invincibility. I always had that feeling of fragility and nerves which made me run faster.
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I've always been very impatient. At age 10 I frankly found life boring, and I can remember age 9 having the awful thought, as it seems now looking back on it, A war! That should liven things up a bit!
Roger Bannister
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Doctors and scientists said breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead
Roger Bannister