In effect, Roger Bannister’s immortality was reinforced by his death last week at 88. Moreover, his international claim to fame, the first sub-four-minute mile, remains timeless in spite of having existed as the world record for a mere 46 days.

What Bannister accomplished a lifetime ago—64 years this May—was simultaneously incapable of reproduction even as it set up its quick demise. No one ever can replace Bannister’s Original Win against the four-minute barrier. Yet the moment he finished track’s classic race in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, he assured the benchmark’s vulnerability.

That is because Bannister’s feat was as psychological as it was physical. Before his breakthrough, there had been building, for at least a decade, myths and old-wives’ tales that attempting such a speed at that distance might result in heart failure. That human lung and muscle capacity already had reached the maximum.

So, with that nonsense dismissed, Bannister’s record, earthshaking as it was on May 6, 1954, was put to rest by Australian John Landy’s 3:58.0 on June 21 of that year.

Within three years, 12 runners had turned in a combined 18 sub-four races. In Bannister’s wake, it now has become almost routine for elite runners to break four minutes, with nearly 1,500 now in that club. At an indoor meet in Boston the week before Bannister died, four men in the same race finished under four minutes. There are high school lads these days running as fast as Bannister’s old standard, with the world mile record now lowered to 3:43:13 by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999.

In the long view, that sort of human progress isn’t so shocking, with all manner of advancements, beyond individual talent, having greased the skids for modern runners. Bannister’s fellow Englishman Sebastian Coe, who rewrote the world mile record three times in the late 1970s and early ‘80s (with a best of 3:47.33), once noted that Bannister clocked his 3:59.4 “on limited scientific knowledge, in leather shoes in which the spikes weighed more than the tissue-thin shoes today, on tracks at which speedway riders would turn up their noses. So as far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great runs of all time.”

Indeed, in 1954, even full nutrition was an issue, with vestiges of the United Kingdom’s World War II-era food rationing still in place. The era’s cinder running tracks were closer to the consistency of sand than present-day synthetic surfaces that put a little bounce in the runner’s step. In Bannister’s time, the science of training was in its relative infancy, with his workouts reported to consist of fewer than 30 miles per week. Compare that to El Guerrouj’s 100 to 120 weekly mileage during his peak seasons in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Bannister even confessed to the occasional cigarette.

Also, the dawn of full professionalism in track during the 1980s began to afford athletes access to the best coaching and the freedom to concentrate all of their time on their sport.

Still, with Bannister’s death, the obituaries and appreciations of the man and his historic moment have exhumed the impact of that first sub-four race from the boneyard of old news. It came a year after the first ascent of Mount Everest and was widely compared to the latter. (Bannister’s Sherpas, his version of mountaineering guide Tenzing Norgay to Edmund Hillary, were track teammates Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, who functioned as pace-setters through three of the mile’s four laps.)

And here are a couple of fascinating details from Bannister’s big day:

It happens that one of the men timing the race at Oxford University’s Iffley Road track was Harold Abrahamson, the former British sprinter whose 100-meter victory at the 1924 Paris Olympics was the inspiration for the 1981 Academy Award-winning film “Chariots of Fire.”

It happens, too, that the Iffley Road public address announcer was another former sprinter named Norris McWhirter, who at the time was a sports journalist and track statistician. One year later, McWhirter co-founded the Guinness Book of World Records and commenced compiling factoids of less enduring extremes such as owner of the earth’s longest fingernails, most rapid yodel or longest continuing attack of hiccupping.

McWhirter is said to have telephoned a London reporter to advise that he should be at Iffley Road for the possibility of a big story. And, sure enough, at the race’s conclusion, McWhirter declared to the 1,000 spectators—in a drawn-out, dramatic cadence—that Bannister had won the meet’s fourth event “in a time which, subject to ratification, is a new track record, British native record, British all-comers record, European record, Commonwealth record and world record: Three minutes.…”

The rest was drowned out by cheers from the crowd. Somehow still echoing.