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

The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.

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.

I couldn't touch my toes with straight legs, but I could break 4 minutes for the mile.

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.

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.

It had always been a British preoccupation to hold this mile record.