May 5, 2023 • 46 mins
EPISODE 194: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: TRUMP'S GLITCH SNITCH: Putting together scoops by CNN and The New York Times it sure looks like somebody - maybe Trump - is going to be charged with destroying or altering security video of the Mar-a-Lago storage room and the boxes of classified documents kept there. That could be a how-to-manual on breaking 18 US Code 1519 and when it's video or digital evidence, it often really does become a jail sentence of 20 years. And the Times says prosecutors have a cooperating witness from inside Mar-a-Lago and we don't know if that's the same snitch from last August, or a new one.
(11:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: THE SUPREME COURT: Then there's Clarence The Corrupt and Mrs. Clarence The Corrupt. The Thomas Scandals are coming so quickly now they're going to have to coordinate schedules to avoid having them collide with each other. Megadonor/Fascist Harlan Crow's flunkies admit to Pro Publica's latest from the AM, that he paid for some of the tuition for Thomas's grand-nephew (whom he was raising "like a son"). But nobody's commenting on the PM scandal: The Washington Post reports Megadonor/Fascist Leonard Leo not only steered "Another $25K" to Ginni Thomas but did so with the involvement of Kellyann Conway AND Leo instructed her to leave Thomas's name off the paperwork. And this time there is something for the Senate to do about it. Not the Judiciary Committee, but Finance: get all their tax returns and get somebody to give up Clarence The Corrupt.
B-Block (19:05) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The inaptly named Venom, on death row in NYC (20:30) IN SPORTS: Saturday, May 6, the sports world will do what it always does on May 6: celebrate the most remarkable track and field milestone of the 20th Century (and maybe of all time). It is now 69 years since Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It was an accomplishment as unbelievable as the Moon Landing; so unbelievable that an editorial in The New York Times asked if it would ever be accomplished again. Roger Bannister won immortal praise, for the rest of his long life and beyond, despite racism and controversy and one minor detail.
He could not POSSIBLY have been the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. There is ample evidence of runners - other British runners in fact - performing the feat as early as 1770. And yet the history of these earlier athletes has been forgotten or erased - or deliberately purged. Why?
C-Block (37:20) IN SPORTS PART TWO: The erasure of the runners who "broke" the four-minute mile barrier in the 18th Century (or earlier) was no accident. It was the deliberate result of the flourishing of the fetishization of amateurism, first in Great Britain in the 1800's, and then throughout the world through the Olympic movement. And it also involved something even worse: blatant, obvious racism. It's an extraordinary story and you should learn the details so you can yell at everybody who tells you about the "great" Roger Bannister.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. There
is a crushing Clarence Thomas scandal that could put people
(00:25):
in prison, and we don't know if it was Yesterday
Mornings Clarence Thomas scandal featuring the private school tuition, or
it was yesterday Evening's Clarence Thomas scandal featuring Kelly an
Cohn job. And there is a Marri Lago snitch close
to Trump who knows when the document boxes were moved
and maybe whether the surveillance tapes were tampered with or
(00:47):
the system glitched. But we don't know if the glitch
snitch is the same Trump informant identified by Axios Newsweekend
Rolling Stone on Get This August tenth of last year,
or if maybe this informant is a different one, a
second glitch snitch. Since the Supreme Court scandals are mostly
(01:09):
about what can be done not to Clarence the corrupts,
but merely to those around him. Thank you, Dianne Feinstein.
Let's start with Trump. Shall he stitching it all together?
I think it looks like this After the Justice Department
sent Trump the subpoena a year ago this month for
every classified document he was still keeping at mary A Lago.
(01:31):
Trump ordered that boxes of documents be moved there. Trump
then rifled through the documents, kept the documents he wanted.
Trump told his lawyers to tell the FEDS that they
had returned everything. Trump told the guys who moved the
boxes not to tell something about that process. And now
there seems to be reasonably that Trump told key people
(01:52):
in his organization, not just at mary A Lago, but
in the whole company. He told them something about the
security cameras and the videotape, and it may have been
edit or destroy it, and doing that ordering that can
get you twenty years for obstruction chump. First it was
(02:14):
CNN with the scoop that special counsel Jack Smith has
drilled down on the surveillance footage. Something is wrong with it,
something is missing, or something is edited, or something is deleted,
or something didn't work the way it was supposed to.
Nobody is saying exactly what it is. There are no
clear hints, but apparently there are communications among Trump operatives
(02:36):
about the video, about the cameras, about the boxes, about
moving the boxes, about what to do about all this crap.
And again there are just vague hints about this, but
there is enough there there that people have invoked. Eighteen
US Code one five one nine and eighteen US Code
(02:56):
one five one nine is quote destruction, alteration, or falsification
of records in federal investigations and bankruptcy, and that can
get you twenty years. And if it's destroying or altering
videotape showing the crime, it will get you twenty years.
And guess what one of the criminal statutes cited by
the government when it got the original search warrant for
(03:19):
Mari Lago was Yes, eighteen US Code one nine destruction
of records, So that broke. And then who shows up
to testify to the Trump Document's grand jury yesterday? But
the two biggest security guys in the Trump organization Matt
(03:41):
Kalamari Senior and Matt Kalamari Junior. And I know Matt
Kalamari Senior. I've talked to him, and Trump involves him
when his organization has screwed up, but it's going to
fix it immediately. It's promising you that. Or he involves
Calamary Senior when he wants to terrify somebody. Because Matt
(04:02):
Kalamari looks like the actor Ron Perlman from Beauty and
the Beast, only much much bigger and with absolutely no
neck whatsoever than the voice so booming that if he
calls you as he did me, you can hear him
before you answer the phone. Then last night The New
York Times said the Special Prosecutor's Office has a snitch.
(04:25):
They've quote obtained the confidential cooperation of a person who
has worked for him at marri Lago, and it referred
to a wave of new subpoenas and grand jury testimony,
including subpoenas to the software company that handles all the
surveillance footage for the Trump organization, Which is presumably why
(04:47):
Kalamari father and Kalamari son the two servings of Kalamari Sorry,
That's presumably why they were called to testify. The Times
also reports that this line by prosecutors pivots on what
has been bubbling beneath the surface for months, that Trump's factotum,
his quote valet unquote Walt Nauta quote failed to provide
(05:10):
them with a full and accurate account of his role
in any movement of boxes containing the classified documents. In
other words, they think this Walt Nauta lied or was
told to lie by Trump. Little else is known about
what prosecutors might have learned from the witness, or when
the witness first began to provide information to the prosecutors.
(05:32):
The Times ads which brings us back to last August tenth,
when Axios wrote, quote trump World is a buzz with
speculation about which close aids or AID has flipped and
provided additional sensitive information to the FBI about what former
President Trump was keeping at mari A Lago. And former
(05:53):
NBC investigative reporter Bill Aiken wrote in Newsweek that the
FBI search of mary A Lago was quote based largely
on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who
was able to identify what classified documents Trump was still
hiding and even the location of those documents. And the
(06:14):
Wall Street Journal reported quote someone familiar with the stored
papers told investigators there may be still more classified documents
at the private club after the National Archives retrieved fifteen
boxes earlier in the year, Justice Department officials had doubts
that the Trump team was being truthful regarding what material
remained at his property, and finally Rolling Stone amped up
(06:38):
the paranoia and mind you, this is all on the
same day last year by quoting a source close to
Trump as saying, quote, he has asked me and others,
do you think our phones are tapped? And has wondered
aloud if there were any Republicans visiting his clubs who
could be wearing a wire. So how many snitches are there?
(07:01):
And how long have they been snitching? And which of
them had eighteen US Code one five one nine read
out aloud to them? And how many of them are
worried about twenty years in prison? And how sweet is
it that, even at this late date, we have the
prospect of Trump maybe ordering somebody to alter the tapes,
(07:22):
like Richard Nixon sitting there listening to the Oval Office
tape from June twentieth, nineteen seventy two, and hitting play
and record again and again and again to erase a
part that he didn't want anybody to hear. And the
next thing you knew there was the infamous eighteen and
a half minute gap. And now maybe there's a Trump gap,
only we don't know how long it is. You should
(07:43):
excuse the expression. To wrap up the Trump thing. There
is also the Egene Carol rape and defamation suit and
Trump basically convicting himself on his taped deposition, which was
played to the court by confirming that the access Hollywood
tape is his code of ethics, and by saying Egen
(08:06):
Carroll wasn't his type parenthesis to rape, but his wives
were his type. And then they showed him a photo
of Ejen Carroll and he mistook her for his second wife,
Marilyn Maples, who he had just said was his type.
Then came Trump's sudden announcement that he was going to
come back from Scotland so he could confront Carrol, and
(08:29):
then his attorney, Joey Tax said, oh, no, he isn't.
And then the judge said, okay, you haven't until Sunday
to show up or shut up Trump. And of course
there was the verdict in the trial of five of
Trump's hitler youth Enrique Terario and the Proud Boys, four
out of five of them convicted of sedition literally of
(08:50):
seditious conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and
the fifth of them being convicted of obstructing congressional proceedings.
And at some point one of these homunculie has got
to be thinking, hmm, maybe I should tell them who
told me to do this before I go to jail
for twenty years, and we all know who is at
(09:11):
the top of that chain of command. Two oh and
as to the FBI provocateurs and the secret conspiracy crap,
I know it's really on the videotape and Baked Alaska.
This and the shaman that the impeccable Scott McFarland of
CBS News pointed out that all this means the Justice
Department has secured a partial or full conviction in each
(09:34):
trial of a January sixth defendant that it has taken
to the jury. So now to the judges, one in
particular Clarence the corrupt and with him Dick the docile.
As one wonders if Harlan Crowe just keeps a template
(09:54):
of sophistry filled nonsense denials opened on his laptop, you
also have to assume that Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin
has a stack of preprinted quotes. How after this the
seven hundred and thirty ninth supremely corrupt court ethics scandal
this week, we must have a rigid new code of
conduct for the justices and Chief Justice Roberts, would you
(10:17):
please do it for us, because Senator Feinstein may or
may not still be on this planet, so we can't
get a subpoena issued, let alone any legislation. You know,
the latest pro publica story by now it's been out
more than twenty four hours that Harlan Crowe paid for
the private school tuition of Clarence the Corrupt's grandnephew, whom
(10:38):
he was raising as a son. And the Harlan Crowe
excuse was so obvious that at least one hundred Twitter
writers beat him to it that Crewe has always been
concerned with at risk children. Then there was the clear
and convincing defense by Mark Pauletta, who is one of
the other guys in that giant painting showing Clarence the
(10:58):
Corrupt at the Harlan Crowe private city in the Adirondack Mountains,
And he said that Thomas never had to disclose this
tuition because the law about dependent children does not say
grand nephew in it. Most entertaining of all was the
confession on behalf of the Thomases by some nitwit from
the National Review that Harlan Crowe did not pay the tuition.
(11:21):
He paid the first year of tuition at two separate institutions.
Oh well, that's all right. Then then last night came
the latest Jinny Thomas scandal. And of course we know
from conservatives that that has nothing to do with Clarence
the Corrupt because he's not his wife. His wife is
(11:42):
his wife. Duh. But this one does invoke one of
America's worst human beings. Washington Post reporting the real life
version of the fictional character that the Republicans call George Soros.
That would be Leonard Leo, the man who basically built
the Federalist Society. Leonard Leo had Kelly Ann Conway bill
(12:06):
quote another twenty five k to the Judicial Education Project,
which Leo advises, and give that another twenty five k
to Ginny Thomas. Oh and remember Kelly Ann to leave
her name off the paperwork. This was the same year
that the Judicial Educational Project had filed a brief to
the Supremely Corrupt Court on the Shelby County be Holder
(12:30):
voting rights case. So let's go. Subpoena Crow. Subpoena Leonard
Leo or Leo Leonard or Leo Leo or whatever his
name is. Subpoena Kelly Ann and right, no, Diane Feinstein, No,
subpoenas shrug emoji. Yet there are things to do here.
(12:53):
Brian Boiler pointed out Harland Crowe paid tens of thousands
of dollars for the tuition of Clarence World's greatest great
uncle kind of Dad Thomas's great nephew. How did Harlan
Crow handle that on his taxes? Made them expenses gifts?
(13:15):
Gifts to Clarence Thomas? Is it a gift to the kid.
There is a Senate Finance Committee and it has a
working Democratic majority, and it has an actual all business
senator named Ron Wyden, and it has the right to
get tax returns, and it could bring Harlan Crow in
to testify, And for that matter, could bring in Clarence
Thomas and Jenny Thomas and Kelly and Conway and Leon
(13:35):
Leonard Leo and find out if they reported any of
the money that wound up going from these fascist financiers
to a Supreme Court justice and his bonker's ex cult
member wife. And you know what, bring the kid into
Mark Martin, the great grand whatever he is, Let's see
how he handled the gift on his taxes. Swear him in.
(13:56):
I'll repeat what I always say, this is not a game.
Clarence Thomas alone could corruptly decide by himself who is
sworn in as president on January twentieth, twenty twenty five.
He is utterly corrupt, irredeemably compromised. He is a bespectacled
whore and a criminal. And if Senate Judiciary can't act,
(14:20):
and if Senate Finance won't act, get the goddamn Justice
Department in here. Somebody committed fraud against some part of
the government in at least one of these two stories
just from yesterday, and whoever that was needs to go
to prison for it, or be threatened with going to
prison for it unless they give up. Clarence Thomas, this
(14:41):
is not a game. Still ahead on this edition of
Countdown this weekend, just like on every other May sixth
(15:02):
since the year nineteen fifty four, the newspapers and the
sites and maybe even some TV will be filled with
stories of the anniversary of that day May sixth, nineteen
fifty four. And you may even see film of Roger
Banister breaking the four minute mile barrier, the first man
ever to do that, except he wasn't the first man
(15:23):
ever to do that. All evidence points to it being
done two hundred years earlier, maybe two thousand years earlier.
It is without doubt the greatest undeserved record or accomplishment
in sports history, and quite a goddamned interesting story. That's next.
(15:46):
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith old Woman
still ahead on countdown. The damnedest sports story I've ever reported,
the track and field milestone of the twentieth century, maybe
(16:07):
of all time, the breaking of the four minute mile barrier,
and it's pretty much all a fraud. Next. First, in
each tradition of countdown, we feature a dog. Indeed you
can help. Every dog has its day to New York,
and it's a crisis again at the pound here half
a dozen dogs could be killed tomorrow, and the most
criminal of these executions would be that of a pity
(16:28):
puppy named Venom. He's like twelve months old. Nice they
named him Venom. Well, despite the name, his family dumped him.
Even though he is good with kids. He's house trained,
he's affectionate, he likes being groomed, he likes people. He's
playful with other dogs. He will let you rub his
(16:48):
cheek on his face. One of my malteses will not
let you rub his cheek on his face, and they
will kill him because the pound is too crowded and
nobody has ever thought to make it a bigger pound. Instead,
Venom needs our pledges to defray the cost of a
rescue to save his life and get him a real home.
Look for Venom's story on my Twitter feeds. Retweet it please,
(17:10):
I thank you, and Venom thanks you. This is Sports Senate. Wait,
(17:32):
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
in sports. This weekend is the anniversary of one of
the most famous events in sports history, one of the
most famous events in twentieth century world history, and everything
you know about it is wrong. Starting at four minutes
(17:57):
after six o'clock on the evening of Thursday, May sixth,
nineteen fifty four, continuing until the day he died on
March third, twenty eighteen, not one day, not one day
went by without somebody congratulating Roger Banister on being the
first human to run a mile in four minutes or less,
(18:17):
the man who broke the four minute mile barrier. We
cannot now comprehend what a big deal this really was.
Neil Armstrong, Times, Charles Lindberg plus George Washington maybe. The
next day, The New York Times published ten different stories
(18:37):
about Roger Banister breaking the four minute mile barrier, plus
an editorial. An editorial on the editorial page that asked
if anybody in world history would ever do it again.
Roger Gilbert Banister began the Times on the front page
ran a mile in three minutes fifty nine point four
(18:58):
seconds tonight to reach one of man's hitherto unattainable goals.
There's just one problem. Not only was Roger Banister probably
not the first man to run a mile in less
than four minutes, but there is also a lot of
evidence that that record was broken in May of seventeen
(19:22):
seventy by a guy who sold fruits and vegetables from
a push cart on the streets of London, a guy
named Parrot. Sixty nine years later, and this is still
(19:42):
the most famous run in the history of the world.
May sixth, nineteen fifty four, on an ordinary spring evening
at the Ifley Road Track at Oxford University in England,
even as an unfavorable wind worked against him, Roger Banister
ran through the tape in three point fifty nine to
four and ran directly into not just sports history, but
(20:05):
human history, the four minute mile, the first human ever
to run that far that fast, like the first man
on the moon, no matter how much farther we go.
But glory is his, indefinitely, forever, always eternal, immortal Neil Armstrong,
But in shorts or there had already been a four
(20:29):
minute mile run in seventeen seventy and Banister has no
more claim to immortality than do you or I. And
this is really a story about bureaucracy supporting bureaucracy, and
what the experts call recency bias, and a lot of racism.
And the story should be about a guy who used
to sell fruits and vegetables on the streets of London,
and who ran in his spare time for money in
(20:51):
the decade before the American Revolution. And his name was Parrot,
as in look, baby, I know a dead parrot when
I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
We begin in the pages of a British book dated
from seventeen ninety four, which seems to be for you
back to the future fans, a kind of Gray's sports Almanac.
(21:14):
The seventeen ninety four tome bears an amazingly modern title,
The Sports magazine and its chronology of top sports events
of recent years past includes for the year seventeen seventy
this quote seventeen seventy, May ninth, James Parrot a costermonger.
(21:35):
A costermonger sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on street.
James Parrott, a costumonger, ran the length of Old Street viz.
From the Charterhouse wall in Goswell Street to Shoreditch Church Gates,
which is a measured mile, in four minutes. Fifteen guineas
to five were betted he did not run the ground
in four minutes and a half. So that's it. I
(21:59):
am besmirching the immortality of Saint Roger Banister and everything
you will see in the newspapers about him over the
weekend because of fifty one words about some guy racing
against an eighteenth century watch in the year seventeen seventy,
and the story wasn't even published until twenty four years later. Seriously, Seriously,
(22:22):
there is nothing else to say about James Parrott. That
snippet from that book is all that researchers have ever
found or found out about James Parrott. No obituary, no nothing,
no four minute mile, no confirmation he ever existed. Besides which,
as every modern sports fan will tell you, the athletes
of today are the great, greater, greatest of all time goats.
(22:45):
If the record book says nobody ran a four minute
mile until nineteen fifty four, of course the record books
are right. Since seventeen seventy, humans have evolved, health has evolved,
training has evolved. Why in seventeen seventy you couldn't even
accurately measure a mile, let alone measure exactly four minutes. Actually,
(23:06):
agricultural chains, designed to resolve who owned what property and
where international borders were had been introduced in sixteen twenty
and have proved to be at worst only off by
around two fifths of an inch over a mile. And
if you're saying agracultural chains, you don't use agricultural chains
(23:28):
in sports, let me ask you this. What do they
use in National Football League games to check whether or
not it's a first down? Okay, we're giving them the
accuracy of the agricultural chains we still use today in
our pro sports. You could measure several blocks of London
in seventeen seventy and say from way back there to
(23:50):
right over here in front of the church. That is
exactly a mile, Governor, But how would you time it
four minutes? Exactly? What did they use? A really good sundial? No,
that had been called a chronometer, or the chronometer was
perfected by seventeen sixty one. You may know the chronometer
(24:10):
as a Swiss watch, or as you might also know it,
a rolex. So this parrot runs a mile, or maybe
he runs a mile plus two fifths of an inch,
and he is timed by several guys with rolexes, and
they all have the same score. He did it in
exactly four minutes. If you're still not convinced, if you're
(24:34):
still googling Roger Bannister's descendants so they can sue this
idiot Ulderman in his podcast, let me emphasize the part
that convinced me that a man named Parrot did run
a four minute mile two months and four days after
the Boston massacre unleashed the events that would culminate in
the American Revolution. Permit me to reread that last sentence
(24:57):
about James Parrott's run from Gray's Sports almana I'm sorry,
from the Sporting magazine of seventeen ninety quote, fifteen guineas
to five were betted he did not run the ground
in four minutes and a half. This guy Parrot bet
on himself and got three to one odds, and the
(25:21):
five guineas wagered here that would be worth about fifty
five hundred dollars in today's money, meaning this was no
eighteenth century Roger Banister hoping to break a record for
Queen and Country. This was a guy who did this
for money, for the equivalent in winnings of about seventeen
thousand dollars, at least as much as his annual income
(25:43):
might have been selling fruits and vegetables from a cart,
And the way it's phrased in that magazine, we don't know.
If more than one bet of fifteen guineas to five
was placed, he might have won thirty four thousand dollars
or fifty one thousand dollars or five hundred and ten
thousand dollars. Because this was for money, the loser or
(26:04):
losers who bet he could not finish the race in
four and a half minutes had to be satisfied that
he had done it in less than four and a half,
in this case, in four as we know from our
own times. Losers now like to claim they didn't lose
and will go to any length to convince others they
did not lose. But James Parrott got his money, which
(26:26):
means that the loser or losers believed James Parrott really
raised a mile and did it in four minutes. I'm
sold antiquated books and four minute miles run one hundred
and eighty three years before the first four minute mile,
and costermongers and agricultural change. They may come and go
and may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, but money is money,
(26:52):
and James Parrott was given the equivalent of his annual
salary at least once because somebody who thought he could
not do it agreed. Yeah, I was wrong. He really, really, really,
really did just run the mile in four minutes. Now,
of course, the whole account in the book could be wrong.
(27:12):
I'm old enough that I was actually on the air
doing sportscast on the radio network of United Press International
on April twenty first, nineteen eighty when Rosie Ruiz quote
one unquote the Boston Marathon. Then it turned out two
people had seen Rosie Ruiz burst out of the crowd
of spectators on Commonwealth Avenue and start running alongside the
(27:33):
men runners. And then it turned out that while she
was supposedly completing the nineteen seventy nine New York Marathon,
she had struck up a conversation with a freelance photographer
on the subway and the two of them went to
the finish line together, and Rosie Ruiz then told officials
she had just finished the race. And Rosie Ruiz was
a total fraud in two different marathons. Maybe the seventeen
(27:57):
seventy four minute mile of James Parrott was just inaccurate.
Maybe it was just an inside joke or a misheard
rumor or a typo, or he took the subway with
Rosie Ruiz, or it was a joke by whoever wrote
the book. I've told you the story before about the
nineteen twelve Saint Louis Brown's second baseman named Proctor, and
(28:20):
nobody could find anything about him. And then it turned
out Proctor was the Western Union operator who used to
make up all the official scorecards after each game, and
one day he decided he always wanted to be a
Major League ballplayer, so he put himself in the scorecard
maybe James Parrott was the author of this the sports
magazine or his four minute miles and Monty Python jokes go. Now,
(28:41):
that's what I call a dead parrot. So if it's
a mistake, if it's a typo, if it's his hype job,
if it's Rosie Ruiz, if it's Lou Proctor, Roger Banister
is safe. Now he's not because there was also a
runner named Powell, and Powell in seventeen eighty seven said
(29:01):
he could run a mile in four minutes and he
wasn't messing around a thousand guineas that he could do
it one point one million dollars in today's money. And
not only that, but he ran on a famous English
running track near Hampton Court, and five days before Christmas
of seventeen eighty seven he ran a time trial so
that the gamblers could all come over and see what
(29:22):
shape he was in and whether they should bet for
him or bet against him. And he did it in
the time trial in four minutes and three seconds. And
when Powell said the betters could see what shape he
was in, he really meant it. He was dedicated to
his cause. Five days before Christmas and this guy ran
a mile naked. All that was in the papers. What
(29:48):
happened to the actual race, We don't know that. Nobody
has ever found that newspaper. Nobody's ever found an account
of the race, only the time trial. So we have
to go under the assumption that Powell never did better
than four to oh three. But once again, Roger Banister
minute mile has withstood the test of time. Uh kinda bah, No,
(30:11):
actually it hasn't. There's also another guy named Weller. Weller
was famous enough as a professional runner of the time
that when he said he could run a mile on
the Banbury Road in Oxford, the newspapers of the day
all showed up to preview it, to talk about his
two brothers, who were also professional runners, and to cover
his attempt on October tenth, seventeen ninety six. And there
it is in the papers. Weller of Oxford runs a
(30:35):
mile in three minutes fifty eight seconds, not only one
hundred and fifty eight years before Roger Banister, but a
second and a half faster than Roger Banister. So here's
the thing. If somebody really ran a mile in three
fifty nine or three fifty eight at the time of
(30:57):
the American Revolution, wouldn't that stand out as such an
impossible performance, then, such an anomaly so startling that it
would be viewed in the same way we would view
news coming up on Monday that somebody now had just
run the mile in three minutes flat. I mean, if
somebody ran the mile in three minutes flat, we would
check to see if the guy was a space alien
(31:19):
or a time traveler. Wouldn't they have been amazed on
October tenth, seventeen ninety six, disbelieving what they had heard,
not at all. And that's the second half of the
story of the day. Roger Banister did not break the
four minute barrier. Research and computers and simulations show that
people in the seventeen eighties were consistently running the mile
(31:43):
in four minutes and eighteen seconds, four minutes and twenty seconds,
four minutes and fifteen seconds, if the info about Weller
is right, three minutes and fifty eight seconds. All the time,
these numbers were being put up by all kinds of runners.
So a four minute mile would have been great, but
not out of context, not in seventeen ninety six. And
(32:05):
then you have to ask, if it happened, where are
all those records, who were all those four minute eighteen
guys and four minute three second guys and three fifty
eight guys. What happened to the records? Well, see, that's
another scandal. Those eighteenth century records were erased in the
(32:26):
nineteenth century because richer, slower people in the nineteenth century
wanted to say they held the records, they erased the
record book. That part of the story, and the additional
sad truth that much of the claims about Roger Banister
are really really racist. Next we know Roger Banister really
(32:59):
did run a three minute and fifty nine second mile
on Mac six, nineteen fifty four in England. It was
timed and announced to a waiting crowd by no less
a figure than Norris mcwherder, who was later the founder
or co founder of the Guinness Book of World Records.
And everybody who was there saw history and was part
(33:21):
of an impossible dream coming true. And as I mentioned earlier,
the next day, the New York Times actually had an
editorial asking whether or not anybody would ever do it again.
There is considerable evidence, as I've laid out here, that
it was done before, like two hundred years before. But
if you are still not convinced that no, no matter
(33:43):
what else it was, Roger Banister's three minute fifty nine
point four second mile on May sixth, nineteen fifty four
was not the first four minute mile. If James Parrott
and the naked runner Powell of Hampton Court and Weller
seventeen ninety six don't convince you there is also this.
There is a sports historian named Peter Radford, himself the
(34:04):
bronze medal in two sprints at the nineteen sixty Olympics
in Rome, and he brought the story of Parrot and
Powell and Weller to the forefront in the British press
nearly twenty years ago. This man found them because he
was looking for and finding the records of more than
six hundred running races in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Running against the clock, against each other, usually for money,
(34:28):
was not only the most popular professional sport in Britain
at that time, it was also probably the first. And
with so many races and especially winning and losing times recorded,
Peter Radford had data to work with. When guys didn't
run a four minute mile, how fast did they run it?
How fast were these professionals going? The average ones over
(34:50):
other distances in say, seventeen eighty nine, what was the
range of times? And his computer looked at all of
these races six hundred or so, and all of the
times and all of the speeds, and it spit out
this conclusion. Factoring in the margin of error, Radford wrote,
the best possible one mile time would be anywhere between
(35:12):
four minutes, thirteen seconds and exactly four minutes. So no,
you cannot say James Parrott ran the first four minute
mile in seventeen seventy, and Weller ran the first sub
four minute mile in seventeen ninety six, not with certainty,
but I think you can say with certainty that somebody
did it before the year eighteen hundred, and that when
(35:34):
Roger Banister crashed through the tape at Oxford at six
oh four Greenwich meantime on the evening of Thursday May sixth,
nineteen fifty four, and the track announcer Norris McWhorter announced
that Roger Banister's time in the mile was and he
gave it a desperately long pause by all accounts, three
minutes fifty I an unfall ten seconds. The moment that
(35:59):
happened Roger Banister became at best the second man to
run a mile in four minutes or less, but more
likely he was like the twenty second or the two
hundred and twenty second. So why why didn't anybody know this?
Why did Roger Banister live a life of unceasing, undiminished
(36:23):
and sorry, undeserved fame? And that guy Weller who may
have run the race a second faster and one hundred
and fifty eight years earlier, why don't we even know
Weller's first name? All sports are based on history. Records
are made to be broken. The older the record, the
louder the break. Who screwed this up? How did we
(36:47):
lose Weller in the nooks and crannies of history. We
didn't lose him. It wasn't an error. It was deliberate.
And that's where this gets to be a crime. Our
historian and ex Olympic runner mister Radford quoted another their
ancient book, British Rural Sports by J. H. Walsh, which
(37:09):
was published in eighteen eighty eight, and in it all
the dozens of speed and distant events had two sets
of records, one for professionals like Parrot and Powell and Weller,
the ones who ran for money, the ones on whom
people bet, the ones who bet on themselves. There was
that set of records, and then another set of records
(37:30):
which was given far more weight and far more importance
for the amateurs. By the early twentieth century, Radford wrote,
the professional records had been erased from these books, expunged,
not forgotten, removed. Why because the professionals were far better
than the amateurs. No amateur held the record in the mile.
(37:53):
It was all professionals, but the amateurs were in charge.
They were the British upper class. They raced not for money,
but for sport. So the amateurs simply did what the
upper class always does in this situation. They erased the
records of all the professionals. And oh, by the way,
they also erased all records set by women. The British
(38:15):
obsession with the superiority of the amateur over the professional.
If you've ever seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you
already know exactly what I mean. It spread throughout the
world through the Olympics. That's why Jim Thorpe lost all
his gold medals from the nineteen twelve Games. Why the
greatest all around athlete ever died in poverty because he
(38:35):
had once played minor league baseball to make some money
in the summer, and everybody knew about it, and nobody
thought they'd hold it against it, but then they held
it against him. He was a professional, so his records
did not count like James Parrott or fill in the
blank here, Powell or I don't remember his first name Weller.
(38:58):
So the world record in the mile as of the
year eighteen sixty one was it to a man, an
amateur named Matthew Green. Matthew Green was the fastest man
in human history four minutes and forty six seconds, four
minutes and forty six seconds. In my twenties, I might
(39:20):
have come close to that number. By nineteen thirteen, the
International Amateur Athletics Federation had taken over, and it recognized
a runner from Cornell, not me, a different runner from Cornell,
as the all time outdoor record holder in the mile
four minutes and thirteen seconds, John Paul Jones, one hundred
and forty three years after James Parrott. The indoor record
(39:43):
in the mile was then held by a man named
Abel kiviat four eighteen and two I met Abel kiviat
I interviewed him when he was ninety. I wish I
had known about James Parrott. Then I didn't. Abel and
I talked about his roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics,
Jim Thorpe Gott to tell you that story. Sometime too,
(40:04):
boy Able Kiviat and I could have had a conversation
about amateurs versus professionals and whether or not his record
was actually a record. Anyway, you can see where this
is all going, and we are almost at our proverbial
finish line. Not only did history forget the great athletes
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries like Parrot and Powell
and Weller, who if they did not break the four
minute mile, they came damn close and did a lot
(40:26):
better than my friend Abel Kiviat did, or my Cornell
guy John Paul Jones, to say another, of Matthew Green
four minutes and forty six seconds, What did you do
stop for lunch? Not only were the remarkable athletes like
Parrot and Powell and Weller forgotten, they were buried deliberately.
(40:48):
It makes the subject of the Roger Banister four minute
mile that everybody celebrates with almost undiminished astonishment every year
at this time. It makes all this a little less
trivial and a little bit more nefarious, wrong and ugly.
(41:09):
Speaking of ugly and Banister, there is one other component
to this story. In the nineteen nineties, having been the
god of the four minute mile for four decades, having
been celebrated every day for breaking a record that was
probably broken one hundred and eighty three years before, Roger
Banister was asked about the new generation of runners, those
of African descent on September twelfth, nineteen ninety five, Sir
(41:33):
Roger Banister explained, quote, it's certainly obvious when you see
an all black sprint final that there must be something
rather special about their anatomy or physiology which produces these
outstanding successes. And indeed there may be, but we don't
know quite what it is. Some countries have the good
fortune to have a high proportion of black sprinters and hurdlers.
(41:56):
End quote. Nineteen years later, Banister was still driving right
into the Eugenics lanes. Sound just enough like Jimmy the
Greek Snyder to make you squirm. I love watching people
like Usain Bolt, Banister said. The West Africans, of course,
have an inbuilt advantage. Having been transported as slaves to
(42:18):
the West Indies, only the toughest endured. They have astonishing
muscle composition, with those fast fibers and superior genes. I
will leave it to you and to his maker an
assessment of how much of Roger Banister was patronizing, how
much was him trying to rationalize how his time had
(42:39):
been bettered by nearly ten percent, and how much of
it was just sheer racism. But I will note that
in what Banister said is another reason to believe that
the idea that he was the first human to run
a four minute mile is laugh out loud ridiculous. What
about all of the runners of color over the centuries,
(43:04):
over the millennia, in Africa and South America and elsewhere
on this globe. By Banister's own disturbing logic, certainly some
of them must have beaten him to breaking the four
minute tape. No, let me close with this. I don't
(43:26):
know for certain who ran the first four minute mile
or when. For all we know, it was broken two
thousand years ago, and for that matter, so was the
present world record of three point forty three point thirteen.
Might have been James Parrott or Powell or Weller whose
first names we don't know, or someone so lost to
history that we don't know their first name, or their
(43:46):
last name, or their country. We don't know who it was.
But no matter what you hear, or see or read
in this Weekend Ahead, it's sure as hell was not
Roger Banister, which brings us lastly to missus Roger Banister,
Moira Elva Jacobsen Banister, daughter of a Swedish economist. According
(44:10):
to Roger Banister, his wife didn't know a lick about sports,
let alone about running, let alone about him running for
a time. Roger Banister once said, my wife thought I
had run four miles in one minute. You know, as
(44:32):
I've been thinking about this and researching that story, you
might as well go with that. Four miles in one
minute no more ridiculous than thinking that Roger Banister was
the first man to run one mile in four minutes.
(45:00):
Bottom line, Roger Banister did an impressive thing on May sixth,
nineteen fifty four. He did not break any barriers nor
set any records. And why we celebrate this every year?
I do not know I've done all the damage I
can do here Here are the credits. Most of the
music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and
John Phillip Shanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors. All
(45:21):
orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, Guitars, bass and
drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two
and it is written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist
(45:42):
ever and our announcer today was Roger Banister. No, it's
Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad. Everything else is pretty much
my fault except the stuff about Banister. That's countdown for
this the eight hundred and fiftieth days since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Do not forget to keep arresting him while
we still can. The next schedule Cauntdown is Monday till then.
(46:06):
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(46:28):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. There
is a crushing Clarence Thomas scandal that could put people
(00:25):
in prison, and we don't know if it was Yesterday
Mornings Clarence Thomas scandal featuring the private school tuition, or
it was yesterday Evening's Clarence Thomas scandal featuring Kelly an
Cohn job. And there is a Marri Lago snitch close
to Trump who knows when the document boxes were moved
and maybe whether the surveillance tapes were tampered with or
(00:47):
the system glitched. But we don't know if the glitch
snitch is the same Trump informant identified by Axios Newsweekend
Rolling Stone on Get This August tenth of last year,
or if maybe this informant is a different one, a
second glitch snitch. Since the Supreme Court scandals are mostly
(01:09):
about what can be done not to Clarence the corrupts,
but merely to those around him. Thank you, Dianne Feinstein.
Let's start with Trump. Shall he stitching it all together?
I think it looks like this After the Justice Department
sent Trump the subpoena a year ago this month for
every classified document he was still keeping at mary A Lago.
(01:31):
Trump ordered that boxes of documents be moved there. Trump
then rifled through the documents, kept the documents he wanted.
Trump told his lawyers to tell the FEDS that they
had returned everything. Trump told the guys who moved the
boxes not to tell something about that process. And now
there seems to be reasonably that Trump told key people
(01:52):
in his organization, not just at mary A Lago, but
in the whole company. He told them something about the
security cameras and the videotape, and it may have been
edit or destroy it, and doing that ordering that can
get you twenty years for obstruction chump. First it was
(02:14):
CNN with the scoop that special counsel Jack Smith has
drilled down on the surveillance footage. Something is wrong with it,
something is missing, or something is edited, or something is deleted,
or something didn't work the way it was supposed to.
Nobody is saying exactly what it is. There are no
clear hints, but apparently there are communications among Trump operatives
(02:36):
about the video, about the cameras, about the boxes, about
moving the boxes, about what to do about all this crap.
And again there are just vague hints about this, but
there is enough there there that people have invoked. Eighteen
US Code one five one nine and eighteen US Code
(02:56):
one five one nine is quote destruction, alteration, or falsification
of records in federal investigations and bankruptcy, and that can
get you twenty years. And if it's destroying or altering
videotape showing the crime, it will get you twenty years.
And guess what one of the criminal statutes cited by
the government when it got the original search warrant for
(03:19):
Mari Lago was Yes, eighteen US Code one nine destruction
of records, So that broke. And then who shows up
to testify to the Trump Document's grand jury yesterday? But
the two biggest security guys in the Trump organization Matt
(03:41):
Kalamari Senior and Matt Kalamari Junior. And I know Matt
Kalamari Senior. I've talked to him, and Trump involves him
when his organization has screwed up, but it's going to
fix it immediately. It's promising you that. Or he involves
Calamary Senior when he wants to terrify somebody. Because Matt
(04:02):
Kalamari looks like the actor Ron Perlman from Beauty and
the Beast, only much much bigger and with absolutely no
neck whatsoever than the voice so booming that if he
calls you as he did me, you can hear him
before you answer the phone. Then last night The New
York Times said the Special Prosecutor's Office has a snitch.
(04:25):
They've quote obtained the confidential cooperation of a person who
has worked for him at marri Lago, and it referred
to a wave of new subpoenas and grand jury testimony,
including subpoenas to the software company that handles all the
surveillance footage for the Trump organization, Which is presumably why
(04:47):
Kalamari father and Kalamari son the two servings of Kalamari Sorry,
That's presumably why they were called to testify. The Times
also reports that this line by prosecutors pivots on what
has been bubbling beneath the surface for months, that Trump's factotum,
his quote valet unquote Walt Nauta quote failed to provide
(05:10):
them with a full and accurate account of his role
in any movement of boxes containing the classified documents. In
other words, they think this Walt Nauta lied or was
told to lie by Trump. Little else is known about
what prosecutors might have learned from the witness, or when
the witness first began to provide information to the prosecutors.
(05:32):
The Times ads which brings us back to last August tenth,
when Axios wrote, quote trump World is a buzz with
speculation about which close aids or AID has flipped and
provided additional sensitive information to the FBI about what former
President Trump was keeping at mari A Lago. And former
(05:53):
NBC investigative reporter Bill Aiken wrote in Newsweek that the
FBI search of mary A Lago was quote based largely
on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who
was able to identify what classified documents Trump was still
hiding and even the location of those documents. And the
(06:14):
Wall Street Journal reported quote someone familiar with the stored
papers told investigators there may be still more classified documents
at the private club after the National Archives retrieved fifteen
boxes earlier in the year, Justice Department officials had doubts
that the Trump team was being truthful regarding what material
remained at his property, and finally Rolling Stone amped up
(06:38):
the paranoia and mind you, this is all on the
same day last year by quoting a source close to
Trump as saying, quote, he has asked me and others,
do you think our phones are tapped? And has wondered
aloud if there were any Republicans visiting his clubs who
could be wearing a wire. So how many snitches are there?
(07:01):
And how long have they been snitching? And which of
them had eighteen US Code one five one nine read
out aloud to them? And how many of them are
worried about twenty years in prison? And how sweet is
it that, even at this late date, we have the
prospect of Trump maybe ordering somebody to alter the tapes,
(07:22):
like Richard Nixon sitting there listening to the Oval Office
tape from June twentieth, nineteen seventy two, and hitting play
and record again and again and again to erase a
part that he didn't want anybody to hear. And the
next thing you knew there was the infamous eighteen and
a half minute gap. And now maybe there's a Trump gap,
only we don't know how long it is. You should
(07:43):
excuse the expression. To wrap up the Trump thing. There
is also the Egene Carol rape and defamation suit and
Trump basically convicting himself on his taped deposition, which was
played to the court by confirming that the access Hollywood
tape is his code of ethics, and by saying Egen
(08:06):
Carroll wasn't his type parenthesis to rape, but his wives
were his type. And then they showed him a photo
of Ejen Carroll and he mistook her for his second wife,
Marilyn Maples, who he had just said was his type.
Then came Trump's sudden announcement that he was going to
come back from Scotland so he could confront Carrol, and
(08:29):
then his attorney, Joey Tax said, oh, no, he isn't.
And then the judge said, okay, you haven't until Sunday
to show up or shut up Trump. And of course
there was the verdict in the trial of five of
Trump's hitler youth Enrique Terario and the Proud Boys, four
out of five of them convicted of sedition literally of
(08:50):
seditious conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and
the fifth of them being convicted of obstructing congressional proceedings.
And at some point one of these homunculie has got
to be thinking, hmm, maybe I should tell them who
told me to do this before I go to jail
for twenty years, and we all know who is at
(09:11):
the top of that chain of command. Two oh and
as to the FBI provocateurs and the secret conspiracy crap,
I know it's really on the videotape and Baked Alaska.
This and the shaman that the impeccable Scott McFarland of
CBS News pointed out that all this means the Justice
Department has secured a partial or full conviction in each
(09:34):
trial of a January sixth defendant that it has taken
to the jury. So now to the judges, one in
particular Clarence the corrupt and with him Dick the docile.
As one wonders if Harlan Crowe just keeps a template
(09:54):
of sophistry filled nonsense denials opened on his laptop, you
also have to assume that Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin
has a stack of preprinted quotes. How after this the
seven hundred and thirty ninth supremely corrupt court ethics scandal
this week, we must have a rigid new code of
conduct for the justices and Chief Justice Roberts, would you
(10:17):
please do it for us, because Senator Feinstein may or
may not still be on this planet, so we can't
get a subpoena issued, let alone any legislation. You know,
the latest pro publica story by now it's been out
more than twenty four hours that Harlan Crowe paid for
the private school tuition of Clarence the Corrupt's grandnephew, whom
(10:38):
he was raising as a son. And the Harlan Crowe
excuse was so obvious that at least one hundred Twitter
writers beat him to it that Crewe has always been
concerned with at risk children. Then there was the clear
and convincing defense by Mark Pauletta, who is one of
the other guys in that giant painting showing Clarence the
(10:58):
Corrupt at the Harlan Crowe private city in the Adirondack Mountains,
And he said that Thomas never had to disclose this
tuition because the law about dependent children does not say
grand nephew in it. Most entertaining of all was the
confession on behalf of the Thomases by some nitwit from
the National Review that Harlan Crowe did not pay the tuition.
(11:21):
He paid the first year of tuition at two separate institutions.
Oh well, that's all right. Then then last night came
the latest Jinny Thomas scandal. And of course we know
from conservatives that that has nothing to do with Clarence
the Corrupt because he's not his wife. His wife is
(11:42):
his wife. Duh. But this one does invoke one of
America's worst human beings. Washington Post reporting the real life
version of the fictional character that the Republicans call George Soros.
That would be Leonard Leo, the man who basically built
the Federalist Society. Leonard Leo had Kelly Ann Conway bill
(12:06):
quote another twenty five k to the Judicial Education Project,
which Leo advises, and give that another twenty five k
to Ginny Thomas. Oh and remember Kelly Ann to leave
her name off the paperwork. This was the same year
that the Judicial Educational Project had filed a brief to
the Supremely Corrupt Court on the Shelby County be Holder
(12:30):
voting rights case. So let's go. Subpoena Crow. Subpoena Leonard
Leo or Leo Leonard or Leo Leo or whatever his
name is. Subpoena Kelly Ann and right, no, Diane Feinstein, No,
subpoenas shrug emoji. Yet there are things to do here.
(12:53):
Brian Boiler pointed out Harland Crowe paid tens of thousands
of dollars for the tuition of Clarence World's greatest great
uncle kind of Dad Thomas's great nephew. How did Harlan
Crow handle that on his taxes? Made them expenses gifts?
(13:15):
Gifts to Clarence Thomas? Is it a gift to the kid.
There is a Senate Finance Committee and it has a
working Democratic majority, and it has an actual all business
senator named Ron Wyden, and it has the right to
get tax returns, and it could bring Harlan Crow in
to testify, And for that matter, could bring in Clarence
Thomas and Jenny Thomas and Kelly and Conway and Leon
(13:35):
Leonard Leo and find out if they reported any of
the money that wound up going from these fascist financiers
to a Supreme Court justice and his bonker's ex cult
member wife. And you know what, bring the kid into
Mark Martin, the great grand whatever he is, Let's see
how he handled the gift on his taxes. Swear him in.
(13:56):
I'll repeat what I always say, this is not a game.
Clarence Thomas alone could corruptly decide by himself who is
sworn in as president on January twentieth, twenty twenty five.
He is utterly corrupt, irredeemably compromised. He is a bespectacled
whore and a criminal. And if Senate Judiciary can't act,
(14:20):
and if Senate Finance won't act, get the goddamn Justice
Department in here. Somebody committed fraud against some part of
the government in at least one of these two stories
just from yesterday, and whoever that was needs to go
to prison for it, or be threatened with going to
prison for it unless they give up. Clarence Thomas, this
(14:41):
is not a game. Still ahead on this edition of
Countdown this weekend, just like on every other May sixth
(15:02):
since the year nineteen fifty four, the newspapers and the
sites and maybe even some TV will be filled with
stories of the anniversary of that day May sixth, nineteen
fifty four. And you may even see film of Roger
Banister breaking the four minute mile barrier, the first man
ever to do that, except he wasn't the first man
(15:23):
ever to do that. All evidence points to it being
done two hundred years earlier, maybe two thousand years earlier.
It is without doubt the greatest undeserved record or accomplishment
in sports history, and quite a goddamned interesting story. That's next.
(15:46):
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith old Woman
still ahead on countdown. The damnedest sports story I've ever reported,
the track and field milestone of the twentieth century, maybe
(16:07):
of all time, the breaking of the four minute mile barrier,
and it's pretty much all a fraud. Next. First, in
each tradition of countdown, we feature a dog. Indeed you
can help. Every dog has its day to New York,
and it's a crisis again at the pound here half
a dozen dogs could be killed tomorrow, and the most
criminal of these executions would be that of a pity
(16:28):
puppy named Venom. He's like twelve months old. Nice they
named him Venom. Well, despite the name, his family dumped him.
Even though he is good with kids. He's house trained,
he's affectionate, he likes being groomed, he likes people. He's
playful with other dogs. He will let you rub his
(16:48):
cheek on his face. One of my malteses will not
let you rub his cheek on his face, and they
will kill him because the pound is too crowded and
nobody has ever thought to make it a bigger pound. Instead,
Venom needs our pledges to defray the cost of a
rescue to save his life and get him a real home.
Look for Venom's story on my Twitter feeds. Retweet it please,
(17:10):
I thank you, and Venom thanks you. This is Sports Senate. Wait,
(17:32):
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
in sports. This weekend is the anniversary of one of
the most famous events in sports history, one of the
most famous events in twentieth century world history, and everything
you know about it is wrong. Starting at four minutes
(17:57):
after six o'clock on the evening of Thursday, May sixth,
nineteen fifty four, continuing until the day he died on
March third, twenty eighteen, not one day, not one day
went by without somebody congratulating Roger Banister on being the
first human to run a mile in four minutes or less,
(18:17):
the man who broke the four minute mile barrier. We
cannot now comprehend what a big deal this really was.
Neil Armstrong, Times, Charles Lindberg plus George Washington maybe. The
next day, The New York Times published ten different stories
(18:37):
about Roger Banister breaking the four minute mile barrier, plus
an editorial. An editorial on the editorial page that asked
if anybody in world history would ever do it again.
Roger Gilbert Banister began the Times on the front page
ran a mile in three minutes fifty nine point four
(18:58):
seconds tonight to reach one of man's hitherto unattainable goals.
There's just one problem. Not only was Roger Banister probably
not the first man to run a mile in less
than four minutes, but there is also a lot of
evidence that that record was broken in May of seventeen
(19:22):
seventy by a guy who sold fruits and vegetables from
a push cart on the streets of London, a guy
named Parrot. Sixty nine years later, and this is still
(19:42):
the most famous run in the history of the world.
May sixth, nineteen fifty four, on an ordinary spring evening
at the Ifley Road Track at Oxford University in England,
even as an unfavorable wind worked against him, Roger Banister
ran through the tape in three point fifty nine to
four and ran directly into not just sports history, but
(20:05):
human history, the four minute mile, the first human ever
to run that far that fast, like the first man
on the moon, no matter how much farther we go.
But glory is his, indefinitely, forever, always eternal, immortal Neil Armstrong,
But in shorts or there had already been a four
(20:29):
minute mile run in seventeen seventy and Banister has no
more claim to immortality than do you or I. And
this is really a story about bureaucracy supporting bureaucracy, and
what the experts call recency bias, and a lot of racism.
And the story should be about a guy who used
to sell fruits and vegetables on the streets of London,
and who ran in his spare time for money in
(20:51):
the decade before the American Revolution. And his name was Parrot,
as in look, baby, I know a dead parrot when
I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
We begin in the pages of a British book dated
from seventeen ninety four, which seems to be for you
back to the future fans, a kind of Gray's sports Almanac.
(21:14):
The seventeen ninety four tome bears an amazingly modern title,
The Sports magazine and its chronology of top sports events
of recent years past includes for the year seventeen seventy
this quote seventeen seventy, May ninth, James Parrot a costermonger.
(21:35):
A costermonger sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on street.
James Parrott, a costumonger, ran the length of Old Street viz.
From the Charterhouse wall in Goswell Street to Shoreditch Church Gates,
which is a measured mile, in four minutes. Fifteen guineas
to five were betted he did not run the ground
in four minutes and a half. So that's it. I
(21:59):
am besmirching the immortality of Saint Roger Banister and everything
you will see in the newspapers about him over the
weekend because of fifty one words about some guy racing
against an eighteenth century watch in the year seventeen seventy,
and the story wasn't even published until twenty four years later. Seriously, Seriously,
(22:22):
there is nothing else to say about James Parrott. That
snippet from that book is all that researchers have ever
found or found out about James Parrott. No obituary, no nothing,
no four minute mile, no confirmation he ever existed. Besides which,
as every modern sports fan will tell you, the athletes
of today are the great, greater, greatest of all time goats.
(22:45):
If the record book says nobody ran a four minute
mile until nineteen fifty four, of course the record books
are right. Since seventeen seventy, humans have evolved, health has evolved,
training has evolved. Why in seventeen seventy you couldn't even
accurately measure a mile, let alone measure exactly four minutes. Actually,
(23:06):
agricultural chains, designed to resolve who owned what property and
where international borders were had been introduced in sixteen twenty
and have proved to be at worst only off by
around two fifths of an inch over a mile. And
if you're saying agracultural chains, you don't use agricultural chains
(23:28):
in sports, let me ask you this. What do they
use in National Football League games to check whether or
not it's a first down? Okay, we're giving them the
accuracy of the agricultural chains we still use today in
our pro sports. You could measure several blocks of London
in seventeen seventy and say from way back there to
(23:50):
right over here in front of the church. That is
exactly a mile, Governor, But how would you time it
four minutes? Exactly? What did they use? A really good sundial? No,
that had been called a chronometer, or the chronometer was
perfected by seventeen sixty one. You may know the chronometer
(24:10):
as a Swiss watch, or as you might also know it,
a rolex. So this parrot runs a mile, or maybe
he runs a mile plus two fifths of an inch,
and he is timed by several guys with rolexes, and
they all have the same score. He did it in
exactly four minutes. If you're still not convinced, if you're
(24:34):
still googling Roger Bannister's descendants so they can sue this
idiot Ulderman in his podcast, let me emphasize the part
that convinced me that a man named Parrot did run
a four minute mile two months and four days after
the Boston massacre unleashed the events that would culminate in
the American Revolution. Permit me to reread that last sentence
(24:57):
about James Parrott's run from Gray's Sports almana I'm sorry,
from the Sporting magazine of seventeen ninety quote, fifteen guineas
to five were betted he did not run the ground
in four minutes and a half. This guy Parrot bet
on himself and got three to one odds, and the
(25:21):
five guineas wagered here that would be worth about fifty
five hundred dollars in today's money, meaning this was no
eighteenth century Roger Banister hoping to break a record for
Queen and Country. This was a guy who did this
for money, for the equivalent in winnings of about seventeen
thousand dollars, at least as much as his annual income
(25:43):
might have been selling fruits and vegetables from a cart,
And the way it's phrased in that magazine, we don't know.
If more than one bet of fifteen guineas to five
was placed, he might have won thirty four thousand dollars
or fifty one thousand dollars or five hundred and ten
thousand dollars. Because this was for money, the loser or
(26:04):
losers who bet he could not finish the race in
four and a half minutes had to be satisfied that
he had done it in less than four and a half,
in this case, in four as we know from our
own times. Losers now like to claim they didn't lose
and will go to any length to convince others they
did not lose. But James Parrott got his money, which
(26:26):
means that the loser or losers believed James Parrott really
raised a mile and did it in four minutes. I'm
sold antiquated books and four minute miles run one hundred
and eighty three years before the first four minute mile,
and costermongers and agricultural change. They may come and go
and may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, but money is money,
(26:52):
and James Parrott was given the equivalent of his annual
salary at least once because somebody who thought he could
not do it agreed. Yeah, I was wrong. He really, really, really,
really did just run the mile in four minutes. Now,
of course, the whole account in the book could be wrong.
(27:12):
I'm old enough that I was actually on the air
doing sportscast on the radio network of United Press International
on April twenty first, nineteen eighty when Rosie Ruiz quote
one unquote the Boston Marathon. Then it turned out two
people had seen Rosie Ruiz burst out of the crowd
of spectators on Commonwealth Avenue and start running alongside the
(27:33):
men runners. And then it turned out that while she
was supposedly completing the nineteen seventy nine New York Marathon,
she had struck up a conversation with a freelance photographer
on the subway and the two of them went to
the finish line together, and Rosie Ruiz then told officials
she had just finished the race. And Rosie Ruiz was
a total fraud in two different marathons. Maybe the seventeen
(27:57):
seventy four minute mile of James Parrott was just inaccurate.
Maybe it was just an inside joke or a misheard
rumor or a typo, or he took the subway with
Rosie Ruiz, or it was a joke by whoever wrote
the book. I've told you the story before about the
nineteen twelve Saint Louis Brown's second baseman named Proctor, and
(28:20):
nobody could find anything about him. And then it turned
out Proctor was the Western Union operator who used to
make up all the official scorecards after each game, and
one day he decided he always wanted to be a
Major League ballplayer, so he put himself in the scorecard
maybe James Parrott was the author of this the sports
magazine or his four minute miles and Monty Python jokes go. Now,
(28:41):
that's what I call a dead parrot. So if it's
a mistake, if it's a typo, if it's his hype job,
if it's Rosie Ruiz, if it's Lou Proctor, Roger Banister
is safe. Now he's not because there was also a
runner named Powell, and Powell in seventeen eighty seven said
(29:01):
he could run a mile in four minutes and he
wasn't messing around a thousand guineas that he could do
it one point one million dollars in today's money. And
not only that, but he ran on a famous English
running track near Hampton Court, and five days before Christmas
of seventeen eighty seven he ran a time trial so
that the gamblers could all come over and see what
(29:22):
shape he was in and whether they should bet for
him or bet against him. And he did it in
the time trial in four minutes and three seconds. And
when Powell said the betters could see what shape he
was in, he really meant it. He was dedicated to
his cause. Five days before Christmas and this guy ran
a mile naked. All that was in the papers. What
(29:48):
happened to the actual race, We don't know that. Nobody
has ever found that newspaper. Nobody's ever found an account
of the race, only the time trial. So we have
to go under the assumption that Powell never did better
than four to oh three. But once again, Roger Banister
minute mile has withstood the test of time. Uh kinda bah, No,
(30:11):
actually it hasn't. There's also another guy named Weller. Weller
was famous enough as a professional runner of the time
that when he said he could run a mile on
the Banbury Road in Oxford, the newspapers of the day
all showed up to preview it, to talk about his
two brothers, who were also professional runners, and to cover
his attempt on October tenth, seventeen ninety six. And there
it is in the papers. Weller of Oxford runs a
(30:35):
mile in three minutes fifty eight seconds, not only one
hundred and fifty eight years before Roger Banister, but a
second and a half faster than Roger Banister. So here's
the thing. If somebody really ran a mile in three
fifty nine or three fifty eight at the time of
(30:57):
the American Revolution, wouldn't that stand out as such an
impossible performance, then, such an anomaly so startling that it
would be viewed in the same way we would view
news coming up on Monday that somebody now had just
run the mile in three minutes flat. I mean, if
somebody ran the mile in three minutes flat, we would
check to see if the guy was a space alien
(31:19):
or a time traveler. Wouldn't they have been amazed on
October tenth, seventeen ninety six, disbelieving what they had heard,
not at all. And that's the second half of the
story of the day. Roger Banister did not break the
four minute barrier. Research and computers and simulations show that
people in the seventeen eighties were consistently running the mile
(31:43):
in four minutes and eighteen seconds, four minutes and twenty seconds,
four minutes and fifteen seconds, if the info about Weller
is right, three minutes and fifty eight seconds. All the time,
these numbers were being put up by all kinds of runners.
So a four minute mile would have been great, but
not out of context, not in seventeen ninety six. And
(32:05):
then you have to ask, if it happened, where are
all those records, who were all those four minute eighteen
guys and four minute three second guys and three fifty
eight guys. What happened to the records? Well, see, that's
another scandal. Those eighteenth century records were erased in the
(32:26):
nineteenth century because richer, slower people in the nineteenth century
wanted to say they held the records, they erased the
record book. That part of the story, and the additional
sad truth that much of the claims about Roger Banister
are really really racist. Next we know Roger Banister really
(32:59):
did run a three minute and fifty nine second mile
on Mac six, nineteen fifty four in England. It was
timed and announced to a waiting crowd by no less
a figure than Norris mcwherder, who was later the founder
or co founder of the Guinness Book of World Records.
And everybody who was there saw history and was part
(33:21):
of an impossible dream coming true. And as I mentioned earlier,
the next day, the New York Times actually had an
editorial asking whether or not anybody would ever do it again.
There is considerable evidence, as I've laid out here, that
it was done before, like two hundred years before. But
if you are still not convinced that no, no matter
(33:43):
what else it was, Roger Banister's three minute fifty nine
point four second mile on May sixth, nineteen fifty four
was not the first four minute mile. If James Parrott
and the naked runner Powell of Hampton Court and Weller
seventeen ninety six don't convince you there is also this.
There is a sports historian named Peter Radford, himself the
(34:04):
bronze medal in two sprints at the nineteen sixty Olympics
in Rome, and he brought the story of Parrot and
Powell and Weller to the forefront in the British press
nearly twenty years ago. This man found them because he
was looking for and finding the records of more than
six hundred running races in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Running against the clock, against each other, usually for money,
(34:28):
was not only the most popular professional sport in Britain
at that time, it was also probably the first. And
with so many races and especially winning and losing times recorded,
Peter Radford had data to work with. When guys didn't
run a four minute mile, how fast did they run it?
How fast were these professionals going? The average ones over
(34:50):
other distances in say, seventeen eighty nine, what was the
range of times? And his computer looked at all of
these races six hundred or so, and all of the
times and all of the speeds, and it spit out
this conclusion. Factoring in the margin of error, Radford wrote,
the best possible one mile time would be anywhere between
(35:12):
four minutes, thirteen seconds and exactly four minutes. So no,
you cannot say James Parrott ran the first four minute
mile in seventeen seventy, and Weller ran the first sub
four minute mile in seventeen ninety six, not with certainty,
but I think you can say with certainty that somebody
did it before the year eighteen hundred, and that when
(35:34):
Roger Banister crashed through the tape at Oxford at six
oh four Greenwich meantime on the evening of Thursday May sixth,
nineteen fifty four, and the track announcer Norris McWhorter announced
that Roger Banister's time in the mile was and he
gave it a desperately long pause by all accounts, three
minutes fifty I an unfall ten seconds. The moment that
(35:59):
happened Roger Banister became at best the second man to
run a mile in four minutes or less, but more
likely he was like the twenty second or the two
hundred and twenty second. So why why didn't anybody know this?
Why did Roger Banister live a life of unceasing, undiminished
(36:23):
and sorry, undeserved fame? And that guy Weller who may
have run the race a second faster and one hundred
and fifty eight years earlier, why don't we even know
Weller's first name? All sports are based on history. Records
are made to be broken. The older the record, the
louder the break. Who screwed this up? How did we
(36:47):
lose Weller in the nooks and crannies of history. We
didn't lose him. It wasn't an error. It was deliberate.
And that's where this gets to be a crime. Our
historian and ex Olympic runner mister Radford quoted another their
ancient book, British Rural Sports by J. H. Walsh, which
(37:09):
was published in eighteen eighty eight, and in it all
the dozens of speed and distant events had two sets
of records, one for professionals like Parrot and Powell and Weller,
the ones who ran for money, the ones on whom
people bet, the ones who bet on themselves. There was
that set of records, and then another set of records
(37:30):
which was given far more weight and far more importance
for the amateurs. By the early twentieth century, Radford wrote,
the professional records had been erased from these books, expunged,
not forgotten, removed. Why because the professionals were far better
than the amateurs. No amateur held the record in the mile.
(37:53):
It was all professionals, but the amateurs were in charge.
They were the British upper class. They raced not for money,
but for sport. So the amateurs simply did what the
upper class always does in this situation. They erased the
records of all the professionals. And oh, by the way,
they also erased all records set by women. The British
(38:15):
obsession with the superiority of the amateur over the professional.
If you've ever seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you
already know exactly what I mean. It spread throughout the
world through the Olympics. That's why Jim Thorpe lost all
his gold medals from the nineteen twelve Games. Why the
greatest all around athlete ever died in poverty because he
(38:35):
had once played minor league baseball to make some money
in the summer, and everybody knew about it, and nobody
thought they'd hold it against it, but then they held
it against him. He was a professional, so his records
did not count like James Parrott or fill in the
blank here, Powell or I don't remember his first name Weller.
(38:58):
So the world record in the mile as of the
year eighteen sixty one was it to a man, an
amateur named Matthew Green. Matthew Green was the fastest man
in human history four minutes and forty six seconds, four
minutes and forty six seconds. In my twenties, I might
(39:20):
have come close to that number. By nineteen thirteen, the
International Amateur Athletics Federation had taken over, and it recognized
a runner from Cornell, not me, a different runner from Cornell,
as the all time outdoor record holder in the mile
four minutes and thirteen seconds, John Paul Jones, one hundred
and forty three years after James Parrott. The indoor record
(39:43):
in the mile was then held by a man named
Abel kiviat four eighteen and two I met Abel kiviat
I interviewed him when he was ninety. I wish I
had known about James Parrott. Then I didn't. Abel and
I talked about his roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics,
Jim Thorpe Gott to tell you that story. Sometime too,
(40:04):
boy Able Kiviat and I could have had a conversation
about amateurs versus professionals and whether or not his record
was actually a record. Anyway, you can see where this
is all going, and we are almost at our proverbial
finish line. Not only did history forget the great athletes
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries like Parrot and Powell
and Weller, who if they did not break the four
minute mile, they came damn close and did a lot
(40:26):
better than my friend Abel Kiviat did, or my Cornell
guy John Paul Jones, to say another, of Matthew Green
four minutes and forty six seconds, What did you do
stop for lunch? Not only were the remarkable athletes like
Parrot and Powell and Weller forgotten, they were buried deliberately.
(40:48):
It makes the subject of the Roger Banister four minute
mile that everybody celebrates with almost undiminished astonishment every year
at this time. It makes all this a little less
trivial and a little bit more nefarious, wrong and ugly.
(41:09):
Speaking of ugly and Banister, there is one other component
to this story. In the nineteen nineties, having been the
god of the four minute mile for four decades, having
been celebrated every day for breaking a record that was
probably broken one hundred and eighty three years before, Roger
Banister was asked about the new generation of runners, those
of African descent on September twelfth, nineteen ninety five, Sir
(41:33):
Roger Banister explained, quote, it's certainly obvious when you see
an all black sprint final that there must be something
rather special about their anatomy or physiology which produces these
outstanding successes. And indeed there may be, but we don't
know quite what it is. Some countries have the good
fortune to have a high proportion of black sprinters and hurdlers.
(41:56):
End quote. Nineteen years later, Banister was still driving right
into the Eugenics lanes. Sound just enough like Jimmy the
Greek Snyder to make you squirm. I love watching people
like Usain Bolt, Banister said. The West Africans, of course,
have an inbuilt advantage. Having been transported as slaves to
(42:18):
the West Indies, only the toughest endured. They have astonishing
muscle composition, with those fast fibers and superior genes. I
will leave it to you and to his maker an
assessment of how much of Roger Banister was patronizing, how
much was him trying to rationalize how his time had
(42:39):
been bettered by nearly ten percent, and how much of
it was just sheer racism. But I will note that
in what Banister said is another reason to believe that
the idea that he was the first human to run
a four minute mile is laugh out loud ridiculous. What
about all of the runners of color over the centuries,
(43:04):
over the millennia, in Africa and South America and elsewhere
on this globe. By Banister's own disturbing logic, certainly some
of them must have beaten him to breaking the four
minute tape. No, let me close with this. I don't
(43:26):
know for certain who ran the first four minute mile
or when. For all we know, it was broken two
thousand years ago, and for that matter, so was the
present world record of three point forty three point thirteen.
Might have been James Parrott or Powell or Weller whose
first names we don't know, or someone so lost to
history that we don't know their first name, or their
(43:46):
last name, or their country. We don't know who it was.
But no matter what you hear, or see or read
in this Weekend Ahead, it's sure as hell was not
Roger Banister, which brings us lastly to missus Roger Banister,
Moira Elva Jacobsen Banister, daughter of a Swedish economist. According
(44:10):
to Roger Banister, his wife didn't know a lick about sports,
let alone about running, let alone about him running for
a time. Roger Banister once said, my wife thought I
had run four miles in one minute. You know, as
(44:32):
I've been thinking about this and researching that story, you
might as well go with that. Four miles in one
minute no more ridiculous than thinking that Roger Banister was
the first man to run one mile in four minutes.
(45:00):
Bottom line, Roger Banister did an impressive thing on May sixth,
nineteen fifty four. He did not break any barriers nor
set any records. And why we celebrate this every year?
I do not know I've done all the damage I
can do here Here are the credits. Most of the
music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and
John Phillip Shanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors. All
(45:21):
orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, Guitars, bass and
drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two
and it is written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist
(45:42):
ever and our announcer today was Roger Banister. No, it's
Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad. Everything else is pretty much
my fault except the stuff about Banister. That's countdown for
this the eight hundred and fiftieth days since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Do not forget to keep arresting him while
we still can. The next schedule Cauntdown is Monday till then.
(46:06):
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(46:28):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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