Pushing the Limits of Impossible

The Bannister Effect

Drew Jackson

April 2, 2025

đź‘‹ Hello friends,

Thank you for joining this week's edition of Brainwaves. I'm Drew Jackson, and today we're exploring:

The Bannister Effect

Key Question: How does the word “impossible” mentally rule our mindsets of things that “cannot” be accomplished?

Thesis: Throughout history, previously “impossible” feats have been achieved, followed by many others subsequently achieving that same feat. The thought of something being “impossible” is more often a mental barrier rather than a true universal barrier.

Credit Sports History Weekly

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Time to Read: 8 minutes.

Let’s dive in!

If you were a peasant in post-Medieval England (circa 1500s) with some extra cash to blow off some steam, you probably gambled (as people continue to do in 2025).

The popular methods: dice games, card games, cockfighting, lotteries - almost anything you could bet money on, people bet on.

Gambling was integrated into daily life, popularized in taverns and alehouses across the country.

Sports betting, like it is now, was one of the more popular forms of betting. Even things as simple as the elementary claim that “I’m faster than you” were bet on.

However, these simplistic bets needed a bit of formality. How far would people run? Where? How could they measure it to standardize it?

Allegedly, this was how the mile was born.

Due to its popularity as a way to measure distances (running and other), in 1593, the Parliament of England issued a statute that the mile’s official length was to be 1,760 yards (5,280 feet).

Mile run contests would attract large numbers of spectators and gamblers, so many that the activity became a professional one with more established participants.

In the 1800s, unofficial world records began to be tracked. High profile contests brought even more publicity to the sport. In 1912, the International Amateur Athletics Federation was formed and confirmed the first officially recognized world record in 1913 by John Paul Jones who ran a 4:14:40 mile.

Over the first half of the 1900s, top men’s middle distance runners continued to set more world records. In 1931, Jules Ladoumegue, a French runner, broke the 4:10 mark with a 4:09:20 run. In 1942, Gunder Hagg, a Swedish runner, broke the 4:05 mark with a 4:04:60 run.

The goal of completing a sub-4-minute mile became a worldwide pursuit (and is still a pursuit for elite athletes today).

Bill Taylor, writing about John Bryant, states:

Bryant reminds us that runners had been chasing the goal seriously since at least 1886, and that the challenge involved the most brilliant coaches and gifted athletes in North America, Europe, and Australia. “For years milers had been striving against the clock, but the elusive four minutes had always beaten them,” he notes. “It had become as much a psychological barrier as a physical one. And like an unconquerable mountain, the closer it was approached, the more daunting it seemed.”

Then, in 1954, Roger Bannister, an Englishman, became the first person to achieve this feat.

As Ryan Hawk writes in his book The Pursuit of Excellence:

As Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company, writes, the “experts” had long believed breaking the four-minute barrier would require ideal running conditions: “It would have to be in perfect weather—68 degrees and no wind. On a particular kind of track—hard, dry clay—and in front of a huge, boisterous crowd urging the runner on to his best-ever performance.” But on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister had none of those things working in his favor.

The day was cold, the Iffley Road Track in Oxford was wet, and the crowd was small at “just a few thousand people.” On top of that, Bannister himself was hardly the picture of a singularly focused athlete intent on breaking this imposing barrier. The bulk of his time was devoted to being a medical student. He was “an outlier and iconoclast—a full-time student who had little use for coaches.” He didn’t train like a maniac and sprint miles every day. He was notorious for doing the opposite: training for just one hour per day. Bannister did not go on to become the greatest middle-distance runner in the world. Instead, he finished his studies and became a neurologist.

Credit Athletics Weekly

Why Bannister, of all people?

Bannister was known to apply a scientific approach to his training. He writes, “Improvement in running depends on continuous self-discipline by the athlete himself, on acute observation of his reaction to races and training, and above all on judgment, which he must learn for himself.”

Majorly, what separated Bannister from other runners of this era was that he believed that the impossible was possible—he believed he could do it.

What’s significant about this achievement?

The current world record for the mile is 3:43:13, set by Hicham El Guerrouj, a man from Morocco, in 1999. So, in the grand scheme of things, Roger’s record, as it only stood for 46 days, won’t be everlasting.

Yet, it was a moment that went down in history. Why?

Well, firstly, for runners it was significant in that it signaled a mindset shift. People thought of the 4 minute barrier as a hard stop, that it simply could not be broken and thus didn’t push themselves to break it. But, once it was broken, it was quite easy for other runners on the cusp to also run sub-4-minute miles.

This is formalized into “The Bannister Effect”, named after Roger’s 4-minute feat.

The Bannister Effect refers to the phenomenon where a groundbreaking achievement inspires others to surpass similar barriers quickly after.

As of June 2022, 1,755 athletes have broken the 4-minute mile barrier.

Credit Sportsnet

Other Examples of The Bannister Effect

The 900

In the 1990s, many professional skaters were trying to land the 900, a 2 and ½ spin in the air on a vert ramp going forward. It was much more difficult to accomplish than the 720 because it forces you to be blind to your landing twice—far more frightening and far more inconsistent to figure out.

From Tony Hawk’s Masterclass on the subject:

I tried my first 900 in 1989. By the time I went around from my second spin, I didn't know where I was. I opened up, and I fell backwards down the ramp. Like, literally upside down, falling down. And it was frightening. I didn't really want to try it again.

I made a few attempts through the years after that. They all kind of ended up the same way. And when I finally actually put one down on the wall, my weight was too far forward, and I fell into the flat bottom and broke my rib. And that set me back quite a bit, because I just thought, maybe it's not possible. I don't know. I thought I had every element to it. I thought had I had what it took to do it. And I just ended up crashing into the flat bottom with all of my weight and all my force.

In 1999, at the X Games in San Francisco, Hawk had some extra time after performing his “best” trick up until that time and decided to go for the 900. That night, he explained, he had consistent speed and consistent spin (something that he didn’t have at other times). After a bit of trial and error, he finally made it.

The X Games was a highly publicized event, and Hawk’s feat helped showcase skateboarding as a legitimate sport and art form. The 900 represented a significant leap in the evolution of skateboarding tricks, inspiring a new generation of skaters to push the limits of the sport, leading to an era of more complex and technical moves.

Credit INEOS 1:59 Challenge

Marathons

A note: technically, this feat is still in the gray area—I’ll explain.

The history of marathons is quite long. Up until 1921, the distance wasn’t standardized, so official records are a bit shady from that time. Since then, records have consistently been broken, going from 2:55:18:4 in 1908 to 2:29:01:8 in 1925 to 2:14:28 in 1963 to 2:04:55 in 2003.

Over the course of a century, times slowly inched faster and faster. As you would imagine, the imaginary 2:00 mark became the target each professional strived toward.

In 2017, Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge attempted to break the 2:00 mark—unofficially, using pacemakers, delivery of hydration by bicycle, and the lack of open competition which would disqualify the attempt from being a true “world record”. Unfortunately, he fell 25 seconds short.

In 2019, he attempted the record again, finally beating the 2:00 mark with a time of 1:59:40:2.

In 2011, the world record holder at the time estimated that the 2-hour mark could be broken in 20 to 25 years. Officially, as of 2025, the 2:00 mark has not been broken, with the current record from 2023 standing at 2:00:35, set by Kenyan athlete Kelvin Kiptum at the Chicago Marathon.

One day, the 2:00 mark will be broken—at this pace, relatively soon probably.

Other Examples

There are hundreds of other examples of The Bannister Effect, some important ones listed here:

Credit Isha Foundation

A Lesson I’m Taking From This

In their book, The Power of Impossible Thinking, Yoram Wind and Colin Crook devote an entire chapter to Roger Bannister’s feat, posing the following questions: “Was there a sudden growth spurt in human evolution? Was there a genetic engineering experiment that created a new race of super runners? No… What changed was the mental model. The runners of the past had been held back by a mindset that said they could not surpass the four-minute mile. When the limit was broken, the others saw that they could do something they had previously thought impossible.”

It’s interesting to think about what we consider “impossible”. Historically, some of the main things we once considered “impossible”, like flying or communicating across vast distances, are now commonplace. Many of the things we believe are “impossible” may not actually be—they may just be highly improbable.

Even if it’s only 1 in a million odds, there are still 8,000 people in the world that could statistically do it.

In our lives, we all have things that seem “impossible”. How many of them actually are? Just because something hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it can’t ever be done. One article talked about how “while you are misusing your energy believing it can’t be done, the Roger Bannisters of the world are busy getting it done.” Another quotes Jean Cocteau stating, “Not knowing it was impossible, he went ahead and did it.”

In The Saturday Morning Newsletter #13, I wrote the following statement, which I still believe is my favorite takeaway from this subject and what I’ll leave you with today:

Moral of the story: If a barrier seems unachievable, it may be, or it may just be that the right person hasn’t come along and broke it down for the rest of us. Maybe you’re that person.

That’s all for today. I’ll be back in your inbox on Saturday with The Saturday Morning Newsletter.

Thanks for reading,

Drew Jackson

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