Clipped from a 2023 episode of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, and replayed in his most recent episode, on the eve of Bannister’s now 71-year-old record-setting run. Olbermann presents a persuasive case, not against Roger Bannister per se, but more to support the notion that other runners achieved this milestone long before Bannister did. And he means long before. As in pre-American Revolution. The reason those early records don’t exist is partly because those runners were “professionals” paid to race, and the amateur associations couldn’t compete—so they deleted the records. It’s a wild story that flipped my perspective on this mythical mark, one I once strove for as a young runner. (No, I never really came close, and my running career was over almost before it started.)