S left to right, Stanislav Jungwirth (2nd), Ken Wood (1st), Dusan Cikel (4th), Brian Fr From left: Stanislav Jungwirth, Ken Wood, Dusan Cikel, Brian Hewson

 

 

Records are made to be broken, but some get broken more easily than others. No better example of durability is ready to mind than the 1500 metres and mile times of Hicham El Gerrouj, both now having passed their half-century. By contrast, some previous records in those events have had a very much shorter life-span, and in one instance this amounted to less than a full day. Furthermore, the improvement in those 23 hours equalled the greatest yet noted for the 1500 metres – 2.1 seconds – and this time in turn was reduced by the even greater margin of exactly three seconds. 

 

The central figures in this fleeting drama are not among those who are immediately thought of as being in the pantheon of middle-distance running – two Finns with confusingly similar names, Olavi Salonen and Olavi Salsola, and a Czech, Stanislav Jungwirth. Salonen and Salsola ran 3:40.2 at 6.30 on the evening of 10 July 1957. Jungwirth improved that time – “obliterated” might be a more appropriate description – with 3:38.1 at 5.30 the following evening. Both performances were achieved on legendary tracks – at Turun Urheilupuisto, in Turku (the birthplace of Paavo Nurmi), where World records had been set by Emil Zátopek at 10,000 metres in 1950 and by John Landy for both 1500 metres and the mile in 1954; and Stará Boleslav, where Zátopek achieved nine of his innumerable records, including another for 10,000 metres in 1953.

 

Since Landy had passed 1500 metres in 3:41.8 en route to his 3:57.9 mile the 1500 record had taken a bit of a buffeting during 1955 and 1956. Sándor Iharos, of Hungary, had done 3:40.8 in July 1955; Gunnar Nielsen, of Denmark, and a second Hungarian, László Tábori, had equalled that in another dead-heat in September that year; the third of the “Magyar Marvels”, István Rószavölgyi, had chipped two-tenths off that in 1956. The Finnish pair were a complete surprise, and even more remarkably there was very nearly another “Olavi” to complete a unique triple tie: Olavi Vuorisalo 3^rd in 3:40.3. Maybe even before the record-breaking application forms had reached the Finnish athletics headquarters, pen was being put to paper on another set of papers some 1800 kilometres away in Czechoslovakia.

 

Stanislav Jungwirth’s time has every right to be considered as one of the most significant in middle-distance or distance running history – maybe even more significant than Roger Bannister’s first sub-four-minute mile, dare one say ? . According to the “World Athletics” Scoring Tables, which provide a highly detailed means of comparing the value of records across the whole range of events, the nearest 1500 metres listing of 1132 points for a time of 3:38.14 is equivalent to the following: 

 

1 mile, 3:55.41. Current World record in 1957, 3:57.9.

5000 metres, 13:21.65. Current World record in 1957, 13:36.4.

10,000 metres, 28:00.20. Current World record in 1957, 28:30.4.

 

The manner of Jungwirth’s accomplishment added immensely to its lustre. Aided by a pacemaker – oddly not identified among the five starters – Jungwirth passed 200 metres in 26.2, 400 metres in 54.9 and 800 metres in 1:54.2, and this was sensational running, far faster than anyone had previously dared to attempt. Since Gunder Hägg and Arne Andersson had set their records in Sweden in 1944, with Hägg’s 3:43.0, which was the equivalent of a mile in 4:00.6 or 4:00.7, subsequently equalled by a third Swede, Lennart Strand, and by Germany’s Werner Lueg, the intermediate times at 1500 metres and one mile had been the following:

 

Hägg (Sweden) 1500 metres 3:43.0, 1944 – 56.0, 1:56.5, 2:58.0

Andersson (Sweden) 1 mile 4:01.6, 1944 – 56.9, 1:56.0, 2:59.2

Hägg (Sweden) 1 mile 4:01.4, 1945 – 56.2, 1:58.5, 2:59.7

Strand (Sweden) 1500 metres 3:43.0, 1947 – 57.0, 1:59.3, 2:59.6

Lueg (German FR) 1500 metres 3:43.0, 1952 – 56.6, 1:58.1, 3:00.2

Iharos (Hungary) 1500 metres 3:40.8, 1955 – 57.0, 1:55.7, 2:57.2

Nielsen (Denmark), Tábori (Hungary) 1500 metres 3:40.8, 1955 – 59.0, 2:02.0, 3:02.0                                                                           

Rószavölgyi (Hungary) 1500 metres 3:40.6, 1956 – 55.7, 1:59.2, 2:59.9

Salonen, Salsola (Finland) 1500 metres 3:40.2, 1957 – 56.6, 1:57.8, 2:58.4

Jungwirth (Czechoslovakia) 1500 metres 3:38.1, 1957 – 54.9, 1:54.2, 2:53.4

 

How “Standa” Jungwirth came to achieve his record is a particularly interesting story because he does not fit an obvious pattern. From the 1950s through to the end of the 1980s we were to become increasingly familiar with athletes from the Communist-ruled bloc of Eastern European countries winning titles and achieving records galore, aided by substantial state support which provided the sort of extensive training facilities, medical and scientific aid and congenial occupations largely denied to their opponents in Western Europe and elsewhere in the World. Jungwirth obviously benefited from this system as a member of  Dukla Praha, the multi-sports club administered by the Czech army, but he does not seem to have owed as much as most to the sort of careful ideological control exercised in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Rumania, for example. Over a career of eight years Jungwirth’s training kilometres per week ranged from 15 to 100 !   

 

In 1959 the American coaching expert, author and ex-Olympic 10,000 metes runner (1948, 1952), Fred Wilt, included Jungwirth as one of his subjects in the first volume of a highly successful series, “How They Train”, featuring more than 100 runners at 800 and 1500 metres, also among them Bannister, Elliott, Harbig, Jazy, Landy, Rószavöglyi and many others of lesser ability. Wilt wrote of Jungwirth’s winter-time régime, “In order to improve his tempo endurance – the ability to sustain a fast pace over a relatively long distance – the highest conceivable quantity of repetitions at different speeds were performed. Workouts were done twice daily with the exception of Sundays, without regard to the weather, mornings from 6.30 to 8, afternoons 4 to 6.30, November to April. Between 120 and 180 sections of 100 metres to 800 metres were run daily, with a light jog between each. Throughout this training the total distance covered progressed from 12 kilometres to 30”.

 

This was the sort of fearsomely heavy work-load that Jungwirth took on in later years and that we had been hearing about from his universally-acclaimed compatriot, Emil Zátopek, very soon after he started winning gold medals and breaking records in 1948, but Jungwirth’s preparations varied to an astonishing degree compared to Zátopek’s apparently relentless preference for regimentation. This was explained many years later by a Czech contributor to the Letsrun.com US website, identifying himself only as “a countryman of Standa”, who messaged that in 1949, aged 18, “Jungwirth started to run 60-150 metres intervals at maximum velocity – nothing else. The idea was that he had to develop his speed first and then he might start to run for endurance. Generally, between the years 1948 and 1951 he trained about four times a week, only quality fast intervals. He ran only about 60 kilometres  a month, but he improved his times to 50.0 for 400 metres, 1:51.0 for 800 metres, 2:25.2 for 1000 metres, 3:48.8 for 1500 metres and 8:37.0 for 3000 metres, which is absolutely incredible for this volume”. With those performances in 1951 Jungwirth at 21 ranked equal 13^th in the World at 800 metres and 7^th at 1500 metres, one place behind Roger Bannister. The Letsrun contributor completed his account by informing fellow-subscribers, some of whom had not even heard of Jungwirth before, “Until 1956 Jungwirth never ran more than 40 kilometres a week. Then he radically changed to 100 kilometres a week, still fast intervals, and the training was obviously too much for his body, injuries came, and he was forced to finish before the Rome Olympics”. 

 

Jungwirth’s first Olympic experience, at the Helsinki Games of 1952, might be thought of  as something of a disappointment, eliminated in the 1500 metres semi-finals, but then as eight of the 10 finalists ran faster during the year than his pre-Games 3:47.2, set at his favoured Stará Boleslav track, not too harsh a judgment should be made. In later years he would be 3^rd in the 1954 European Championships, 6^th in the 1956 Olympic Games and 8^th in the 1958 European Championships, and that bronze medal behind fellow World record-holders Bannister and  Nielsen perhaps merits more than the statement by the doyen of athletics historians, Roberto Quercetani, in his 1964 “World History of Track and Field Athletics”, that “Jungwirth seldom, if ever, did himself justice on big occasions”. Curiously, too, when Signor Quercetani came to preview the 1958 season in that year’s “International Athletics Annual”, published on behalf of the worldwide Association of Track and Field Statisticians”, he listed Delany, Herrmann, Ibbotson, Richtzenhain, Waern and Wood as leading European contenders at 1500 metres and the mile but made no mention of the Czech World record-holder. 

 

In the October following the Helsinki Olympics the peerless Zátopek had nicely complemented his three gold medals with World records for 15 miles, 25,000 metres and 30,000 metres at Stará Boleslav, and there on the same day Jungwirth ran a national record 800 metres of 1:48.7, which ranked behind only Olympic champion Malvin Whitfield, of the USA, and Norway’s Audun Boysen for the year. The next day and in the same place, at the rather odd hour of 11.30 in the morning, Jungwirth broke the World record for 1000 metres with 2:21.2, leading all the way, passing 800 metres in 1:52.1 and winning by 13.8 seconds. The existing record had been held only since August by Olle Åberg, of Sweden, and as it happens the next incumbents would be Whitfield, 2:20.8 in 1953, and Boysen, successively 2:20.4 that year, 2:19.5 in 1954 and 2:19.0 in 1955. This event was a lot more popular then than it is now and was no easy option for record-chasers – Jungwirth’s 2:21.2 was worth about 3:43.8 for 1500 metres or 4:01.5 for the mile.

 

Jungwirth beats Roger Bannister in 1954 over 880 yards.

 

Jungwirth had been born in the Southern Bohemian town of Prachatice on 15 August 1930; He was 5ft 10in (1.78m) in height, weighed 10st 3lb (65kg), and his much younger and much taller brother, Tomás, born 24 November 1942, 6ft 2in (1.87m), was also a fine athlete, 5^th in the 1966 European Championships 800 metres in a career best 1:46.7 and an Olympian in 1968. He also ran 1500 metres in 3:43.8, and as “Standa” had a best 800 metres of 1:47.5 in 1957 the Jungwirths were at the time the World’s fastest brothers at these distances.

 

In the lead-up to his 1500 metres World record, Stanislav Jungwirth had already shown exceptional form in June of 1957, winning a remarkable race at the distance in Warsaw at the Kusocinski Memorial meeting (named after the 1932 Olympic 10,000 metres champion executed during World War II by the Germans). Jungwirth’s time of 3:42.0 was a national record, as was 3:43.0 in 2^nd place for Velisa Mugosa (Yugoslavia), 3:43.4 in 3^rd for Jonas Pipyne (USSR) and 3:44.0 in 4^th for Michel Jazy (France). Then, soon afterwards, the World record was seriously threatened, Jungwirth running 3:40.9 in Cracow, in Poland, on 29 June, and it is difficult to understand why his subsequent record attempt was organised in his homeland in such secrecy. There were apparently only 421 spectators in attendance that evening, and a notable absentee was a highly experienced athletics writer (and former champion professional sprinter) named James Armour Milne, who was British by birth but was living and working in Czechoslovakia and had reported in great detail on every one of Zátopek’s main achievements. For once Milne was not at the track-side, notebook and stopwatch in hand, and so the accounts of the race accessible in Western Europe beyond the “Iron Curtain” were no more than sketchy.

 

In an era of newspaper reporting in Britain in which foreign news was, in any case, given only limited attention, the specialist press provided the proper response. Melvyn Watman, who was to become the most respected of chroniclers of the sport during the next 60 years and more, struck the appropriate note in “Athletics Weekly”, writing, “Barely had the numbing effect of the Turku race worn off than came the news of Stanislav Jungwirth’s ‘out of this world’ time. This not altogether surprising performance by the Czech is equal in merit to a 3:56 mile, and thus Jungwirth is almost two seconds faster than the next best 1500 metres/mile runner of all-time, John Landy. In this writer’s humble opinion, it is the greatest performance in the sport’s history. That is not to say that Jungwirth’s feat represents the last word in this event. Delany, for one, is capable of beating it, but the most significant feature of the run was the method, as seen from the intermediate times. Jungwirth’s unprecedented fast running in the early stages may well revolutionise middle-distance racing tactics. It would certainly make a refreshing change from the last-lap bursts and would probably lead to a great improvement in general standards”.

 

Such were the complexities of printing and publishing magazines in those pre-computer days that before Mel Watman’s impassioned words had even appeared another advance had been made in middle-distance standards. A week after Jungwirth’s break-through, on the evening of Friday 19 July, at the venerable White City Stadium, in London, where the athletics track was inconveniently situated distantly for spectators beyond a surrounding greyhound-racing circuit, the first events took place in a London-v-New York match which would continue the following afternoon. Added to the timetable was an invitation mile in which Jungwirth, together with the Olympic 1500 metres champion, Ronnie Delany and a Pole, Stefan Lewandowski, who had run 3:42.3 for 1500 metres in 2^nd place to Jungwirth in Cracow, were the visiting guests. Highly favoured, though, by the British press during the week’s publicity build-up had been Derek Ibbotson, who had broken the British three miles record the previous weekend and had run a 4:00.6 mile in May. The other noted Briton on the start-list was an Olympic 1500 metres finalist, Ken Wood. It would not be Jungwirth’s first miling appearance at the White City; the previous year, in a GB-v-Czechoslovakia two-a-side match, he had split the British pairing of  Wood and Brian Hewson in an agonisingly close finish, 4:03.8, 4:04.0, 4:04.0.

 

Ibbotson’s subsequent 3:57.2 World record, followed home by Delany 3:58.8, Jungwirth 3:59.1, Wood 3:59.3 and Lewandowski 4:00.6, has, of course, been very well documented. The furious early pace was set by Mike Blagrove, 55.3 (almost precisely the same as in Jungwirth’s 1500) and 1:55.6, and then Jungwirth led past the bell in 3:00.0 until Ibbotson went ahead on the back straight. Blagrove did not finish the race and the next year had the mixed blessing of achieving a career best 4:00.0. It may be hard to appreciate, but pace-making such as his was still a controversial subject then, and after Ibbbotson’s record the editor of “’Athletics Weekly”, Jimmy Green, had this to say: “What a pity that people had to start talking and writing about the possibility that pacing would nullify any record. The rule about pacing was intended to stop any of the ‘old pals act’ which we were getting some time ago with Bannister, Chataway and Brasher, and which was put on with the sole idea of helping Bannister to achieve a fast time, and was all against the spirit of the sport. The race at the White City was entirely different. It was a great race from start to finish, and with half-a-lap to go no one could say with any certainty who was going to win. The fact that Blagrove deliberately set a fast pace for two laps, faded on the third and eventually dropped out has nothing to do with the validity of the race at all. It would be carrying things to ridiculous lengths to suggest that any time a runner sets a fast pace but does not finish means that none of the other runners can set a new record !”

 

In 1960 Ibbotson’s autobiography was published, “as told by” an ebullient athletics newspaperman, Terry O’Connor, who, as it happened, had organised the London-v-New York meeting on behalf of the “Evening News”, and there was, naturally, plenty to say about this race, including references to numerous press reports, none carrying more weight than that of Roger Bannister himself in the “Sunday Times”. He was adamant: “Last Friday’s mile came as near to perfection as a mile can. The question in every mind on Friday night was ‘Who will lead ?’ Not Ibbotson, for he met his worst defeat in Los Angeles last May by leading from the gun. Not Delany, for he is the master of many close finishes. Not Jungwirth, for he is a half-miler to be feared. So Friday’s race could have ended in anti-climax. It was saved by the unselfish running of Michael Blagrove, of Ealing Harriers. A 4min 7sec miler, he could not hope to win, but at Ibbotson’s request he carried three of the greatest milers in the world through their greatest stages of anxiety”. Bannister’s concept of Jungwirth as an 800 metres runner would have been imprinted on his mind for the past three years because the two of them had met at the White City in Bannister’s first serious race a month after his sub-four-minute mile and Jungwirth had won at 880 yards rather easily.

 

In describing the last preparations for his record-breaking race, Ibbotson paid particular attention to Jungwirth and the time he had achieved, and Jungwirth stayed in the forefront of his mind until well into the decisive last lap. “I estimated that his time was worth around 3min 57sec for the mile, and that was what I was secretly hoping to do myself”, Ibbotson said, though he (and O’Connor) quoted the 1500 time wrongly ! “Jungwirth had been competing in top athletics much longer than myself but was still young”, Ibbotson continued. “His running style is rather ugly – like a crab movement, with his arms rotating across the body. As he darted up and down in his blue track-suit, I noticed he did not get up on his toes. This made me feel more confident”. Of the first lap Ibbotson said, “I was running behind Jungwirth for the first time and his style looked even more awkward. He seemed to shuffle along, but there was no wasted effort in his leg action”. Then after halfway “Jungwirth looked tremendously strong and seemed as if he could go on indefinitely”.  In the last lap Ibbotson said, “I moved up to Jungwirth, just to test him at first. He held me off. Should I wait or go now ? Fear gave me wings like the Mercury I used to dream of on the Yorkshire moors. I drove past Jungwirth and I was out on my own”. 

 

Early in August Armour Milne got his chance to write at length about Jungwirth at the World Youth Games, held in Moscow. This was a multi-sports competition very largely dominated in that era by the Communist-bloc countries as an alternative to the World University Games,  which, of course, meant that in that era of “Cold War” confrontation neither of these Games were properly representative of either students or youth, whatever the interpretation of the latter might have been. Jungwirth was very unexpectedly beaten in the 1500 metres by the USSR’s Jonas Pipyne, who Jungwirth had readily disposed of in Warsaw in June, and Yevgeniy Sokolov,  with Pipyne setting a national record of 3:41.1, Sokolov at 3:41.7 and Jungwirth 3:42.0. There were even existing and future World record holders in 4^th and 5^th places – Rószavölgyi and Siegfried Valentin, of East Germany, who would run 2:16.7 for 1000 metres in 1960. Pipyne was actually Lithuanian, had run in the 1956 Olympic heats, and also took part in the 1957 World University Games in Paris in September, in which he was 2^nd in the 1500 metres won in a much more mundane 3:50.5 by Josef Ceglédi, of Austria, who had been a Hungarian team-mate of Iharos, Rószavölgyi and Tábori but had defected the previous year.

 

Armour Milne was surprisingly scathing about Jungwirth in the lengthy report for “Athletics Weekly” which he supplied from Moscow. “To those present it must have been obvious what was going to happen”, he wrote. “Jungwirth, clearly with yet another World record in mind, and maybe not sufficiently respectful towards his opponents, decided that he was capable of making his own pace and winning as well, which to my mind is akin to thinking you can have your cake and eat it. And, of course, as would happen 99 times in 100 in the same circumstances, he was beaten on the run-in. In other words, the best runner in the race on current form did the donkey work for others and quite rightly paid the penalty for his rashness”. It was a sound argument by Armour Milne, but as Jungwirth had previously won soundly against Pipyne, and Rószavölgyi was past his best and Valentin yet to reach his, he was probably justified in believing beforehand that he could win from the front. Perhaps the simple explanation for the result was that it was just one of those days when two runners, inspired in front of a home crowd, ran their race of a lifetime. Pipyne, incidentally, still holds the Lithuanian record for 2000 metres of 5:08.4, set in 1958 ! 

 

Jungwirth’s memorable year of 1957 finished in anti-climax because he went off on a tour of Australia in December, but on his return to Prague in time for New Year his coach, Ladislav Fischer, who had accompanied him, summed up the visit in a single terse sentence – “Illness, high fever, weakness, atrocious heat and poor quality of the tracks”. Jungwirth’s one win was in a tactical mile in 4:12.2 – and, as a matter of interest, Herb Elliott ran his first sub-four-minute mile the following month. Well beaten in the European Championships 1500 metres of 1958, won by Great Britain’s Brian Hewson, Jungwirth ran almost six seconds faster less than a week later but suffered in the process the galling experience of losing his World record by a massive margin to the precocious Herb Elliott, 3:36.0 to 3:39.0. A long way further back was Derek Ibbotson, 3:50.8, now a shadow of his form of a year ago and having already lost his mile record earlier that August by another massive margin to Elliott’s 3:54.5.

 

The informed contributor to the Letsrun.com messenger board was nonetheless not correct in his assertion that Jungwirth’s career was over before the 1960 Olympics. In fact, he continued for several more years, though the figures show conclusively that 1959 was his last year of real class, and even then his fastest 1500 metres in 3:42.4 was in a race won by Rószavölgyi in 3:41.2 – the Hungarian was the World leader that year at 3:38.9, the 4^th fastest ever to Elliott, Jungwirth and Murray Halberg, of New Zealand, 3:38.8. Jungwirth finished off the year at Stará Boleslav with a rare excursion at 3000 metres and a most impressive win in 8:02.8, which ranked 7^th in the World for the year. To that date only 10 runners had ever beaten eight minutes for the distance, headed by a World record of 7:52.8 for Great Britain’s Gordon Pirie in 1956.

 

What, it could be wondered, was the appeal of Stará Boleslav, aptly described as “the bright little stadium in the country, well sheltered by a belt of high trees” ?  For an informed visitor in an evangelical frame of mind (as I was a few years ago) on, say, a brisk autumnal morning, with a pallid sunlight slanting through the overhanging branches, the image of a familiar figure padding out of the shadows and across the grassland could readily be aroused, “one moment looking like a super-tuned machine, the next like a fugitive of justice”. It would be equally tempting to visualise the runner stepping on to the crumbling cinders and then beginning to stride awkwardly but relentlessly round, kilometre after kilometre after kilometre, more than 20 of them in all – 55 or so circuits of the odd little track. Why 363.78 metres ? What possible divisible figure is that ? The impressionable onlooker, having made the 30-kilometre No.367 bus journey across the verdant plain from the outskirts of Prague, might in his imaginative pilgrimage be transported back more than 70 years to a late Saturday afternoon at the end of September 1951. The iconic figure is, of course, Zátopek, and he trundles past 10 miles in 48 minutes and 12 seconds, then 20,000 metres in another World record, and just 8.2 seconds and 52 metres later achieves his ultimate objective – the furthest distance ever run in an hour. Zátopek himself had set the previous record only a fortnight before, but that was in the cavernous expanses of the Strahovsky Stadium, in Prague, where 250,000 spectators could be crammed into the towering terraces. At Stará Boleslav maybe 2000 could crowd against the track-side railings. Zátopek revelled in the rural informality. 

 

That, of course, is no more than a fond illusion.

 

Jungwirth’s career came to an end just as that of another exceptional Czech middle-distance runner was gathering momentum. Josef Odložil would be the silver-medallist in the 1964 Olympic 1500 metres behind Peter Snell and also set a World record 2000 metres of 5:01.1 the next year and surpassed Jungwirth’s national records at 1000 metres (2:18.6, 1965) and 1500 metres (3:37.6, 1966) – all at Stará Boleslav, naturally. When Snell set his World reord mile of 3:54.1 in Auckland in November 1964 Odložil was 2^nd in 3:56.4. He and Jungwirth met up on a couple of occasions, as recorded in an exhaustive career compilation for Odložil assembled by a leading Czech statistician, Zdenӑk Venta, for the November 1972 issue of  the Prague-published bulletin, “Start”. In an inter-club match in Brno in June 1961 Odložil won the 800 metres in 1:51.3, with Jungwirth 3^rd in 1:52.6. In October that year both shared in a 3 x 1000 metres relay national record of 7:20.8 and ran together in the same event the next year. In May 1963 Odložil beat Jungwirth at 1000 metres in Prague, 2:22.9 to 2:24.3, and their last meeting was later that month in the historic and cultural town of Znojmo, near the Austrian border, where Tomás Salinger won an 800 metres from Odložil, both 1:51.4, with Jungwirth rather out of it, 4^th in 1:53.4. In such obscurity, as is so often the case with ageing champions, Jungwirth’s competitive career came to an end. 

 

Josef Odložil married the Olympic champion gymnast, Vera Čáslavská, but they later divorced and Odložil’s life came to a tragic end in 1993 at the age of 54 when he was killed in a violent argument with his 19-year-old son. Stanislav Jungwirth had died of cancer, aged 56, in 1986. The Czech national record for 1500 metres is now 3:32.49 by Jakub Holuša in 2018, but the mile record remains from 1978 at 3:52.59 by Jozef Plachy, and Stanislav Jungwirth still has a share in the 4 x 1500 metres relay record by Dukla Praha from 1954 !

 

 

 

Records are made to be broken, but some get broken more easily than others. No better example of durability is ready to mind than the 1500 metres and mile times of Hicham El Gerrouj, both now having passed their half-century. By contrast, some previous records in those events have had a very much shorter life-span, and in one instance this amounted to less than a full day. Furthermore, the improvement in those 23 hours equalled the greatest yet noted for the 1500 metres – 2.1 seconds – and this time in turn was reduced by the even greater margin of exactly three seconds. 

 

The central figures in this fleeting drama are not among those who are immediately thought of as being in the pantheon of middle-distance running – two Finns with confusingly similar names, Olavi Salonen and Olavi Salsola, and a Czech, Stanislav Jungwirth. Salonen and Salsola ran 3:40.2 at 6.30 on the evening of 10 July 1957. Jungwirth improved that time – “obliterated” might be a more appropriate description – with 3:38.1 at 5.30 the following evening. Both performances were achieved on legendary tracks – at Turun Urheilupuisto, in Turku (the birthplace of Paavo Nurmi), where World records had been set by Emil Zátopek at 10,000 metres in 1950 and by John Landy for both 1500 metres and the mile in 1954; and Stará Boleslav, where Zátopek achieved nine of his innumerable records, including another for 10,000 metres in 1953.

 

Since Landy had passed 1500 metres in 3:41.8 en route to his 3:57.9 mile the 1500 record had taken a bit of a buffeting during 1955 and 1956. Sándor Iharos, of Hungary, had done 3:40.8 in July 1955; Gunnar Nielsen, of Denmark, and a second Hungarian, László Tábori, had equalled that in another dead-heat in September that year; the third of the “Magyar Marvels”, István Rószavölgyi, had chipped two-tenths off that in 1956. The Finnish pair were a complete surprise, and even more remarkably there was very nearly another “Olavi” to complete a unique triple tie: Olavi Vuorisalo 3^rd in 3:40.3. Maybe even before the record-breaking application forms had reached the Finnish athletics headquarters, pen was being put to paper on another set of papers some 1800 kilometres away in Czechoslovakia.

 

Stanislav Jungwirth’s time has every right to be considered as one of the most significant in middle-distance or distance running history – maybe even more significant than Roger Bannister’s first sub-four-minute mile, dare one say ? . According to the “World Athletics” Scoring Tables, which provide a highly detailed means of comparing the value of records across the whole range of events, the nearest 1500 metres listing of 1132 points for a time of 3:38.14 is equivalent to the following: 

 

1 mile, 3:55.41. Current World record in 1957, 3:57.9.

5000 metres, 13:21.65. Current World record in 1957, 13:36.4.

10,000 metres, 28:00.20. Current World record in 1957, 28:30.4.

 

The manner of Jungwirth’s accomplishment added immensely to its lustre. Aided by a pacemaker – oddly not identified among the five starters – Jungwirth passed 200 metres in 26.2, 400 metres in 54.9 and 800 metres in 1:54.2, and this was sensational running, far faster than anyone had previously dared to attempt. Since Gunder Hägg and Arne Andersson had set their records in Sweden in 1944, with Hägg’s 3:43.0, which was the equivalent of a mile in 4:00.6 or 4:00.7, subsequently equalled by a third Swede, Lennart Strand, and by Germany’s Werner Lueg, the intermediate times at 1500 metres and one mile had been the following:

 

Hägg (Sweden) 1500 metres 3:43.0, 1944 – 56.0, 1:56.5, 2:58.0

Andersson (Sweden) 1 mile 4:01.6, 1944 – 56.9, 1:56.0, 2:59.2

Hägg (Sweden) 1 mile 4:01.4, 1945 – 56.2, 1:58.5, 2:59.7

Strand (Sweden) 1500 metres 3:43.0, 1947 – 57.0, 1:59.3, 2:59.6

Lueg (German FR) 1500 metres 3:43.0, 1952 – 56.6, 1:58.1, 3:00.2

Iharos (Hungary) 1500 metres 3:40.8, 1955 – 57.0, 1:55.7, 2:57.2

Nielsen (Denmark), Tábori (Hungary) 1500 metres 3:40.8, 1955 – 59.0, 2:02.0, 3:02.0                                                                           

Rószavölgyi (Hungary) 1500 metres 3:40.6, 1956 – 55.7, 1:59.2, 2:59.9

Salonen, Salsola (Finland) 1500 metres 3:40.2, 1957 – 56.6, 1:57.8, 2:58.4

Jungwirth (Czechoslovakia) 1500 metres 3:38.1, 1957 – 54.9, 1:54.2, 2:53.4

 

How “Standa” Jungwirth came to achieve his record is a particularly interesting story because he does not fit an obvious pattern. From the 1950s through to the end of the 1980s we were to become increasingly familiar with athletes from the Communist-ruled bloc of Eastern European countries winning titles and achieving records galore, aided by substantial state support which provided the sort of extensive training facilities, medical and scientific aid and congenial occupations largely denied to their opponents in Western Europe and elsewhere in the World. Jungwirth obviously benefited from this system as a member of  Dukla Praha, the multi-sports club administered by the Czech army, but he does not seem to have owed as much as most to the sort of careful ideological control exercised in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Rumania, for example. Over a career of eight years Jungwirth’s training kilometres per week ranged from 15 to 100 !   

 

In 1959 the American coaching expert, author and ex-Olympic 10,000 metes runner (1948, 1952), Fred Wilt, included Jungwirth as one of his subjects in the first volume of a highly successful series, “How They Train”, featuring more than 100 runners at 800 and 1500 metres, also among them Bannister, Elliott, Harbig, Jazy, Landy, Rószavöglyi and many others of lesser ability. Wilt wrote of Jungwirth’s winter-time régime, “In order to improve his tempo endurance – the ability to sustain a fast pace over a relatively long distance – the highest conceivable quantity of repetitions at different speeds were performed. Workouts were done twice daily with the exception of Sundays, without regard to the weather, mornings from 6.30 to 8, afternoons 4 to 6.30, November to April. Between 120 and 180 sections of 100 metres to 800 metres were run daily, with a light jog between each. Throughout this training the total distance covered progressed from 12 kilometres to 30”.

 

This was the sort of fearsomely heavy work-load that Jungwirth took on in later years and that we had been hearing about from his universally-acclaimed compatriot, Emil Zátopek, very soon after he started winning gold medals and breaking records in 1948, but Jungwirth’s preparations varied to an astonishing degree compared to Zátopek’s apparently relentless preference for regimentation. This was explained many years later by a Czech contributor to the Letsrun.com US website, identifying himself only as “a countryman of Standa”, who messaged that in 1949, aged 18, “Jungwirth started to run 60-150 metres intervals at maximum velocity – nothing else. The idea was that he had to develop his speed first and then he might start to run for endurance. Generally, between the years 1948 and 1951 he trained about four times a week, only quality fast intervals. He ran only about 60 kilometres  a month, but he improved his times to 50.0 for 400 metres, 1:51.0 for 800 metres, 2:25.2 for 1000 metres, 3:48.8 for 1500 metres and 8:37.0 for 3000 metres, which is absolutely incredible for this volume”. With those performances in 1951 Jungwirth at 21 ranked equal 13^th in the World at 800 metres and 7^th at 1500 metres, one place behind Roger Bannister. The Letsrun contributor completed his account by informing fellow-subscribers, some of whom had not even heard of Jungwirth before, “Until 1956 Jungwirth never ran more than 40 kilometres a week. Then he radically changed to 100 kilometres a week, still fast intervals, and the training was obviously too much for his body, injuries came, and he was forced to finish before the Rome Olympics”. 

 

Jungwirth’s first Olympic experience, at the Helsinki Games of 1952, might be thought of  as something of a disappointment, eliminated in the 1500 metres semi-finals, but then as eight of the 10 finalists ran faster during the year than his pre-Games 3:47.2, set at his favoured Stará Boleslav track, not too harsh a judgment should be made. In later years he would be 3^rd in the 1954 European Championships, 6^th in the 1956 Olympic Games and 8^th in the 1958 European Championships, and that bronze medal behind fellow World record-holders Bannister and  Nielsen perhaps merits more than the statement by the doyen of athletics historians, Roberto Quercetani, in his 1964 “World History of Track and Field Athletics”, that “Jungwirth seldom, if ever, did himself justice on big occasions”. Curiously, too, when Signor Quercetani came to preview the 1958 season in that year’s “International Athletics Annual”, published on behalf of the worldwide Association of Track and Field Statisticians”, he listed Delany, Herrmann, Ibbotson, Richtzenhain, Waern and Wood as leading European contenders at 1500 metres and the mile but made no mention of the Czech World record-holder. 

 

In the October following the Helsinki Olympics the peerless Zátopek had nicely complemented his three gold medals with World records for 15 miles, 25,000 metres and 30,000 metres at Stará Boleslav, and there on the same day Jungwirth ran a national record 800 metres of 1:48.7, which ranked behind only Olympic champion Malvin Whitfield, of the USA, and Norway’s Audun Boysen for the year. The next day and in the same place, at the rather odd hour of 11.30 in the morning, Jungwirth broke the World record for 1000 metres with 2:21.2, leading all the way, passing 800 metres in 1:52.1 and winning by 13.8 seconds. The existing record had been held only since August by Olle Åberg, of Sweden, and as it happens the next incumbents would be Whitfield, 2:20.8 in 1953, and Boysen, successively 2:20.4 that year, 2:19.5 in 1954 and 2:19.0 in 1955. This event was a lot more popular then than it is now and was no easy option for record-chasers – Jungwirth’s 2:21.2 was worth about 3:43.8 for 1500 metres or 4:01.5 for the mile.

 

Jungwirth had been born in the Southern Bohemian town of Prachatice on 15 August 1930; He was 5ft 10in (1.78m) in height, weighed 10st 3lb (65kg), and his much younger and much taller brother, Tomás, born 24 November 1942, 6ft 2in (1.87m), was also a fine athlete, 5^th in the 1966 European Championships 800 metres in a career best 1:46.7 and an Olympian in 1968. He also ran 1500 metres in 3:43.8, and as “Standa” had a best 800 metres of 1:47.5 in 1957 the Jungwirths were at the time the World’s fastest brothers at these distances.

 

In the lead-up to his 1500 metres World record, Stanislav Jungwirth had already shown exceptional form in June of 1957, winning a remarkable race at the distance in Warsaw at the Kusocinski Memorial meeting (named after the 1932 Olympic 10,000 metres champion executed during World War II by the Germans). Jungwirth’s time of 3:42.0 was a national record, as was 3:43.0 in 2^nd place for Velisa Mugosa (Yugoslavia), 3:43.4 in 3^rd for Jonas Pipyne (USSR) and 3:44.0 in 4^th for Michel Jazy (France). Then, soon afterwards, the World record was seriously threatened, Jungwirth running 3:40.9 in Cracow, in Poland, on 29 June, and it is difficult to understand why his subsequent record attempt was organised in his homeland in such secrecy. There were apparently only 421 spectators in attendance that evening, and a notable absentee was a highly experienced athletics writer (and former champion professional sprinter) named James Armour Milne, who was British by birth but was living and working in Czechoslovakia and had reported in great detail on every one of Zátopek’s main achievements. For once Milne was not at the track-side, notebook and stopwatch in hand, and so the accounts of the race accessible in Western Europe beyond the “Iron Curtain” were no more than sketchy.

 

In an era of newspaper reporting in Britain in which foreign news was, in any case, given only limited attention, the specialist press provided the proper response. Melvyn Watman, who was to become the most respected of chroniclers of the sport during the next 60 years and more, struck the appropriate note in “Athletics Weekly”, writing, “Barely had the numbing effect of the Turku race worn off than came the news of Stanislav Jungwirth’s ‘out of this world’ time. This not altogether surprising performance by the Czech is equal in merit to a 3:56 mile, and thus Jungwirth is almost two seconds faster than the next best 1500 metres/mile runner of all-time, John Landy. In this writer’s humble opinion, it is the greatest performance in the sport’s history. That is not to say that Jungwirth’s feat represents the last word in this event. Delany, for one, is capable of beating it, but the most significant feature of the run was the method, as seen from the intermediate times. Jungwirth’s unprecedented fast running in the early stages may well revolutionise middle-distance racing tactics. It would certainly make a refreshing change from the last-lap bursts and would probably lead to a great improvement in general standards”.

 

Such were the complexities of printing and publishing magazines in those pre-computer days that before Mel Watman’s impassioned words had even appeared another advance had been made in middle-distance standards. A week after Jungwirth’s break-through, on the evening of Friday 19 July, at the venerable White City Stadium, in London, where the athletics track was inconveniently situated distantly for spectators beyond a surrounding greyhound-racing circuit, the first events took place in a London-v-New York match which would continue the following afternoon. Added to the timetable was an invitation mile in which Jungwirth, together with the Olympic 1500 metres champion, Ronnie Delany and a Pole, Stefan Lewandowski, who had run 3:42.3 for 1500 metres in 2^nd place to Jungwirth in Cracow, were the visiting guests. Highly favoured, though, by the British press during the week’s publicity build-up had been Derek Ibbotson, who had broken the British three miles record the previous weekend and had run a 4:00.6 mile in May. The other noted Briton on the start-list was an Olympic 1500 metres finalist, Ken Wood. It would not be Jungwirth’s first miling appearance at the White City; the previous year, in a GB-v-Czechoslovakia two-a-side match, he had split the British pairing of  Wood and Brian Hewson in an agonisingly close finish, 4:03.8, 4:04.0, 4:04.0.

 

Ibbotson’s subsequent 3:57.2 World record, followed home by Delany 3:58.8, Jungwirth 3:59.1, Wood 3:59.3 and Lewandowski 4:00.6, has, of course, been very well documented. The furious early pace was set by Mike Blagrove, 55.3 (almost precisely the same as in Jungwirth’s 1500) and 1:55.6, and then Jungwirth led past the bell in 3:00.0 until Ibbotson went ahead on the back straight. Blagrove did not finish the race and the next year had the mixed blessing of achieving a career best 4:00.0. It may be hard to appreciate, but pace-making such as his was still a controversial subject then, and after Ibbbotson’s record the editor of “’Athletics Weekly”, Jimmy Green, had this to say: “What a pity that people had to start talking and writing about the possibility that pacing would nullify any record. The rule about pacing was intended to stop any of the ‘old pals act’ which we were getting some time ago with Bannister, Chataway and Brasher, and which was put on with the sole idea of helping Bannister to achieve a fast time, and was all against the spirit of the sport. The race at the White City was entirely different. It was a great race from start to finish, and with half-a-lap to go no one could say with any certainty who was going to win. The fact that Blagrove deliberately set a fast pace for two laps, faded on the third and eventually dropped out has nothing to do with the validity of the race at all. It would be carrying things to ridiculous lengths to suggest that any time a runner sets a fast pace but does not finish means that none of the other runners can set a new record !”

 

In 1960 Ibbotson’s autobiography was published, “as told by” an ebullient athletics newspaperman, Terry O’Connor, who, as it happened, had organised the London-v-New York meeting on behalf of the “Evening News”, and there was, naturally, plenty to say about this race, including references to numerous press reports, none carrying more weight than that of Roger Bannister himself in the “Sunday Times”. He was adamant: “Last Friday’s mile came as near to perfection as a mile can. The question in every mind on Friday night was ‘Who will lead ?’ Not Ibbotson, for he met his worst defeat in Los Angeles last May by leading from the gun. Not Delany, for he is the master of many close finishes. Not Jungwirth, for he is a half-miler to be feared. So Friday’s race could have ended in anti-climax. It was saved by the unselfish running of Michael Blagrove, of Ealing Harriers. A 4min 7sec miler, he could not hope to win, but at Ibbotson’s request he carried three of the greatest milers in the world through their greatest stages of anxiety”. Bannister’s concept of Jungwirth as an 800 metres runner would have been imprinted on his mind for the past three years because the two of them had met at the White City in Bannister’s first serious race a month after his sub-four-minute mile and Jungwirth had won at 880 yards rather easily.

 

In describing the last preparations for his record-breaking race, Ibbotson paid particular attention to Jungwirth and the time he had achieved, and Jungwirth stayed in the forefront of his mind until well into the decisive last lap. “I estimated that his time was worth around 3min 57sec for the mile, and that was what I was secretly hoping to do myself”, Ibbotson said, though he (and O’Connor) quoted the 1500 time wrongly ! “Jungwirth had been competing in top athletics much longer than myself but was still young”, Ibbotson continued. “His running style is rather ugly – like a crab movement, with his arms rotating across the body. As he darted up and down in his blue track-suit, I noticed he did not get up on his toes. This made me feel more confident”. Of the first lap Ibbotson said, “I was running behind Jungwirth for the first time and his style looked even more awkward. He seemed to shuffle along, but there was no wasted effort in his leg action”. Then after halfway “Jungwirth looked tremendously strong and seemed as if he could go on indefinitely”.  In the last lap Ibbotson said, “I moved up to Jungwirth, just to test him at first. He held me off. Should I wait or go now ? Fear gave me wings like the Mercury I used to dream of on the Yorkshire moors. I drove past Jungwirth and I was out on my own”. 

 

Early in August Armour Milne got his chance to write at length about Jungwirth at the World Youth Games, held in Moscow. This was a multi-sports competition very largely dominated in that era by the Communist-bloc countries as an alternative to the World University Games,  which, of course, meant that in that era of “Cold War” confrontation neither of these Games were properly representative of either students or youth, whatever the interpretation of the latter might have been. Jungwirth was very unexpectedly beaten in the 1500 metres by the USSR’s Jonas Pipyne, who Jungwirth had readily disposed of in Warsaw in June, and Yevgeniy Sokolov,  with Pipyne setting a national record of 3:41.1, Sokolov at 3:41.7 and Jungwirth 3:42.0. There were even existing and future World record holders in 4^th and 5^th places – Rószavölgyi and Siegfried Valentin, of East Germany, who would run 2:16.7 for 1000 metres in 1960. Pipyne was actually Lithuanian, had run in the 1956 Olympic heats, and also took part in the 1957 World University Games in Paris in September, in which he was 2^nd in the 1500 metres won in a much more mundane 3:50.5 by Josef Ceglédi, of Austria, who had been a Hungarian team-mate of Iharos, Rószavölgyi and Tábori but had defected the previous year.

 

Armour Milne was surprisingly scathing about Jungwirth in the lengthy report for “Athletics Weekly” which he supplied from Moscow. “To those present it must have been obvious what was going to happen”, he wrote. “Jungwirth, clearly with yet another World record in mind, and maybe not sufficiently respectful towards his opponents, decided that he was capable of making his own pace and winning as well, which to my mind is akin to thinking you can have your cake and eat it. And, of course, as would happen 99 times in 100 in the same circumstances, he was beaten on the run-in. In other words, the best runner in the race on current form did the donkey work for others and quite rightly paid the penalty for his rashness”. It was a sound argument by Armour Milne, but as Jungwirth had previously won soundly against Pipyne, and Rószavölgyi was past his best and Valentin yet to reach his, he was probably justified in believing beforehand that he could win from the front. Perhaps the simple explanation for the result was that it was just one of those days when two runners, inspired in front of a home crowd, ran their race of a lifetime. Pipyne, incidentally, still holds the Lithuanian record for 2000 metres of 5:08.4, set in 1958 ! 

 

Jungwirth’s memorable year of 1957 finished in anti-climax because he went off on a tour of Australia in December, but on his return to Prague in time for New Year his coach, Ladislav Fischer, who had accompanied him, summed up the visit in a single terse sentence – “Illness, high fever, weakness, atrocious heat and poor quality of the tracks”. Jungwirth’s one win was in a tactical mile in 4:12.2 – and, as a matter of interest, Herb Elliott ran his first sub-four-minute mile the following month. Well beaten in the European Championships 1500 metres of 1958, won by Great Britain’s Brian Hewson, Jungwirth ran almost six seconds faster less than a week later but suffered in the process the galling experience of losing his World record by a massive margin to the precocious Herb Elliott, 3:36.0 to 3:39.0. A long way further back was Derek Ibbotson, 3:50.8, now a shadow of his form of a year ago and having already lost his mile record earlier that August by another massive margin to Elliott’s 3:54.5.

 

The informed contributor to the Letsrun.com messenger board was nonetheless not correct in his assertion that Jungwirth’s career was over before the 1960 Olympics. In fact, he continued for several more years, though the figures show conclusively that 1959 was his last year of real class, and even then his fastest 1500 metres in 3:42.4 was in a race won by Rószavölgyi in 3:41.2 – the Hungarian was the World leader that year at 3:38.9, the 4^th fastest ever to Elliott, Jungwirth and Murray Halberg, of New Zealand, 3:38.8. Jungwirth finished off the year at Stará Boleslav with a rare excursion at 3000 metres and a most impressive win in 8:02.8, which ranked 7^th in the World for the year. To that date only 10 runners had ever beaten eight minutes for the distance, headed by a World record of 7:52.8 for Great Britain’s Gordon Pirie in 1956.

 

What, it could be wondered, was the appeal of Stará Boleslav, aptly described as “the bright little stadium in the country, well sheltered by a belt of high trees” ?  For an informed visitor in an evangelical frame of mind (as I was a few years ago) on, say, a brisk autumnal morning, with a pallid sunlight slanting through the overhanging branches, the image of a familiar figure padding out of the shadows and across the grassland could readily be aroused, “one moment looking like a super-tuned machine, the next like a fugitive of justice”. It would be equally tempting to visualise the runner stepping on to the crumbling cinders and then beginning to stride awkwardly but relentlessly round, kilometre after kilometre after kilometre, more than 20 of them in all – 55 or so circuits of the odd little track. Why 363.78 metres ? What possible divisible figure is that ? The impressionable onlooker, having made the 30-kilometre No.367 bus journey across the verdant plain from the outskirts of Prague, might in his imaginative pilgrimage be transported back more than 70 years to a late Saturday afternoon at the end of September 1951. The iconic figure is, of course, Zátopek, and he trundles past 10 miles in 48 minutes and 12 seconds, then 20,000 metres in another World record, and just 8.2 seconds and 52 metres later achieves his ultimate objective – the furthest distance ever run in an hour. Zátopek himself had set the previous record only a fortnight before, but that was in the cavernous expanses of the Strahovsky Stadium, in Prague, where 250,000 spectators could be crammed into the towering terraces. At Stará Boleslav maybe 2000 could crowd against the track-side railings. Zátopek revelled in the rural informality. 

 

That, of course, is no more than a fond illusion.

 

Jungwirth’s career came to an end just as that of another exceptional Czech middle-distance runner was gathering momentum. Josef Odložil would be the silver-medallist in the 1964 Olympic 1500 metres behind Peter Snell and also set a World record 2000 metres of 5:01.1 the next year and surpassed Jungwirth’s national records at 1000 metres (2:18.6, 1965) and 1500 metres (3:37.6, 1966) – all at Stará Boleslav, naturally. When Snell set his World reord mile of 3:54.1 in Auckland in November 1964 Odložil was 2^nd in 3:56.4. He and Jungwirth met up on a couple of occasions, as recorded in an exhaustive career compilation for Odložil assembled by a leading Czech statistician, Zdenӑk Venta, for the November 1972 issue of  the Prague-published bulletin, “Start”. In an inter-club match in Brno in June 1961 Odložil won the 800 metres in 1:51.3, with Jungwirth 3^rd in 1:52.6. In October that year both shared in a 3 x 1000 metres relay national record of 7:20.8 and ran together in the same event the next year. In May 1963 Odložil beat Jungwirth at 1000 metres in Prague, 2:22.9 to 2:24.3, and their last meeting was later that month in the historic and cultural town of Znojmo, near the Austrian border, where Tomás Salinger won an 800 metres from Odložil, both 1:51.4, with Jungwirth rather out of it, 4^th in 1:53.4. In such obscurity, as is so often the case with ageing champions, Jungwirth’s competitive career came to an end. 

 

Josef Odložil married the Olympic champion gymnast, Vera Čáslavská, but they later divorced and Odložil’s life came to a tragic end in 1993 at the age of 54 when he was killed in a violent argument with his 19-year-old son. Stanislav Jungwirth had died of cancer, aged 56, in 1986. The Czech national record for 1500 metres is now 3:32.49 by Jakub Holuša in 2018, but the mile record remains from 1978 at 3:52.59 by Jozef Plachy, and Stanislav Jungwirth still has a share in the 4 x 1500 metres relay record by Dukla Praha from 1954 !

 

 

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