So the values were career, medicine. Sport was something other, something to be set aside.
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Sir Roger Bannister
Middle-distance runner and neurologist; first man to run a mile in under four minutes
United Kingdom · 1929–2018
Sport
About
Roger Bannister was an English middle-distance runner and neurologist who became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, at Iffley Road, Oxford, in May 1954. He retired from competition later that year and spent the rest of his working life in medicine, specialising in disorders of the autonomic nervous system.
4 answers
there was already an area of research, the autonomic nervous system, which was relatively neglected. It was between cardiology and neurology, and these areas in between are often the province of neither specialty, and so can lag behind. And that was the area I chose and this changed the second half of my life, if you like, because I then set up a laboratory.
I had set my mind on winning the 1500-meter gold medal in Helsinki in 1952. ... And, it all came disastrously wrong when I came fourth instead of winning. ... Instead of retiring in order to devote myself to medicine, I decided to go on for another two years while I was still a student, working clinically in London, and I did that.
No, because I was set for it. My core, my whole life was medicine. I wanted to become a specialist. So for ten years I concentrated solely on medicine. It took ten years to become a consultant in neurology.
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