Lions Gate Road Runners invite our members and any other interested runners to join us on August 6th for a low-key mile race to celebrate the 56th anniversary of the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games "Miracle Mile".


In August of 1954 athletes from across the British Empire gathered in Vancouver to contest the 5th British Empire and Commonwealth Games. The mile race was promoted by the press as the "Miracle Mile". It would feature Roger Bannister (England) and John Landy (Australia), the only two men to have broken the four minute "barrier" for the mile. The Empire Games running track was in the newly constructed Empire Stadium, today temporary home of the BC Lions. The training track was at UBC near the athletes village. But we are not at Empire Stadium or even at the UBC track where hundreds of spectators and press gathered daily to watch Landy's training sessions. This is a quiet tree-lined park out of the eyes of the public, with a well-kept cinder track that Bannister slipped away to with a couple of team-mates to run his pre-race time trials. The press wrote that they "slid out of camp with collars turned up and in dark glasses to train". The secret training location they had discovered was Balaclava Park.

Bannister went on to win the Empire Games mile, famously overtaking Landy while he was glancing over his shoulder in the other direction.



To commemorate the anniversary of the Empire Games mile race, Lions Gate Road Runners invite our members and any other interested runners to join us in our version of the Miracle Mile on Friday August 6 2010 at Balaclava Park. We will run on the same track Roger Bannister used for his pre-race time trials in 1954. The original track is still here; not so well maintained, more of a dirt surface than cinders with grass encroaching onto lane one, but still a genuine 440 yard running track. It is most unlikely that any of us could even remotely approach Bannister's training times, but we meet for this low key event to celebrate the anniversary of the "Miracle Mile" and to enjoy a social outdoor gathering on a summer evening.