What was boldly described in that summer of 1954 as the "Mile of the Century" had engaged the imagination of athletics followers around the world. Britain's Daily Telegraph described it as a "tremendous duel between the two four-minute milers", adding: "This is the perfect race, in that it is a personal struggle rather than a contest against the stopwatch. The whole world is awaiting the outcome."

As the race got underway, the TV commentator set what he considered to be the scene: "The question is, today, whether Bannister's tremendous finishing kick in the last quarter can offset the blistering pace that Landy likes to set."

He was not far wrong.

Landy's clipped, economical style, which had enabled him to lower Bannister's world record of
3min 59.4sec to 3:58.00 six weeks earlier, had established him in a 10-metre lead over the rest of the field at the halfway stage.

Roger Bannister struggles to keep in touch with John Landy close to the halfway point of the "Miracle Mile" at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver
©LIFE collection/Getty Images

The race hung by a thread - or rather, in Bannister's own phrase - "some invisible cord". And as the contest revealed its heart - man against man - the Briton attempted to draw that cord tighter with each stride. As the two men entered the final lap the gap was no more than a couple of yards.

As well as a television audience estimated at 100 million, there were millions more radio listeners following the race. More than 500 radio stations across the United States were providing live commentary, as was BBC commentator Rex Alston.

"And now we have 300 yards to go," Alston reported. "Can Bannister catch him? There's none of his famed spurt at the moment. Landy is drawing slightly away. Yes, Landy has a lead of three yards. It's 220 yards to go and I don't believe Bannister is going to be able to catch him.

"Landy is running beautifully; no, Bannister is coming up on him now; 150 yards to go and Bannister is gaining ever so slightly with each stride; 130 yards to go and Bannister is coming up on Landy's elbow. Bannister has passed Landy..."

As he began to realise the lead he had taken inside the first lap was not - quite - decisive, Landy had checked several times on Bannister's progress by looking over his left shoulder. Critically, he did it again as the two men approached the finishing straight - at the exact moment when the taller and more solidly built Briton made his move on the outside.

By the time Landy turned back round again he was looking at the back of a British running shirt which he could not bring any closer as the line approached.

The decisive moment - Landy starts to check to his left as Bannister makes his move to pass him on the outside as they come around the final bend ©LIFE Collection/Getty Images

The coincidence of actions was the decisive moment of the race - a moment which was commemorated in the same city 13 years later when a statue of Bannister overtaking Landy on the final bend was unveiled.

"Because of the curve of the track," Bannister wrote in his 1955 autobiography The First Four Minutes, "he could see behind him with only half a turn of the head. He knew that to challenge now I must run extra distance, and therefore he did not expect it.

"The moment he looked round, he was unprotected against me and so lost a valuable fraction of a second in his response to my challenge. It was my tremendous luck that these two happenings - his turning round and my final spurt - came absolutely simultaneously."

Bannister finished five yards clear in 3:58.8 - just over half a second faster than he had run in setting his historic mark at the Iffley Road stadium on May 6. Landy took the silver medal in 3:59.6. It was the first time two men had broken the four-minute mile in the same race.

Roger Bannister wins the mile at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver in a time of 3 min 58.8sec, ahead of John Landy, who clocked 3:59.6. It was the first time two runners had bettered four minutes in the same race
©LIFE Collection/Getty Images

The Briton collapsed after the line into the arms of the British team manager Leslie Truelove, who briefly lifted him off the ground as if he were a giant baby. Soon Bannister was resting one arm over the shoulder of his rival.

In a post-race trackside TV interview Bannister - his constant coughing an indication of the monumental effort he had just made in what he later described as his "defining race" - commented: "In England it's not easy to come across an opponent who can do a 2.57 three-quarter mile as John Landy did today. There's no double that my great respect for him as an athlete, one of the greatest milers in the world, made me bring the very most out of myself. He's a very great runner and it was a privilege for me to run in that race."

Asked if he had gone off too quickly, Landy replied: "No. I had no alternative. I had nobody to help me. I tried to run a lone wolf race, if I couldn't shake Roger off I had to lose. When I looked round on the final back straight and he was still with me I knew it was curtains.

"But I think it was a very good race, I have no excuse, I couldn't beat him in the circumstances, he just outkicked me in the final 70, 80 yards and that was all there was to it. It was a good clean race and it definitely went to the better man on the day."

Quoted in Brian Oliver's book The Commonwealth Games – Extraordinary Stories Behind The Medals (Bloomsbury, £12.99), Landy, who took the 1500m bronze at the Olympics held two years after Vancouver in his native city of Melbourne, reflected: "Vancouver was a watershed race. If I had won that, everybody would have said it should have been me who broke the four minute mile...That race had all the ingredients of a world title fight. I don't think I'd have ever run again if I'd won."

An exhausted Bannister is partly supported by Landy after the 1954 race
©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Thirty years later another global television audience of millions watched with equal fascination as two more acknowledged masters of the track met on the biggest sporting occasion in the world's calendar - the Olympic Games.

The eventual margin of victory was almost identical to that in Vancouver - while Bannister finished 0.8 clear, the gap Coe established after putting together four final 100m times of, successively, 14.0, 13.5, 13.0 and 12.7 was 0.87. But the tone of the aftermath was utterly different.

After crossing the lane, Coe turned, enraged, towards the press box, pointing at it with both hands and shouting out what Track and Field News reported to be "Now believe in me!"

Coe retained sufficient composure to check back and take the hand of congratulation offered by Cram, but after a brief exchange of words he renewed his fierce attention on the press box before setting off on a testosterone-charged lap of honour, chin jutting, index finger of his right hand raised just in case anyone was missing who had just proved himself, once again, and despite all obstacles, the numero uno.

Figuratively, if not literally, Coe was raising a middle finger to those within the British press who had written him off after two years struggling with injuries and illness, including a prolonged bout of toxoplasmosis, a potentially fatal parasitic disease, which had put an end to any ambitions he might have had at the inaugural IAAF World Championships in Helsinki in the summer of 1983 and involved him in numerous hospital visits.

A defiant Sebastian Coe points up towards the press box in the wake of his successful defence of the Olympic 1500m title at the 1984 Los Angeles Games ©Getty Images

While Coe was away, Cram did play - the rangy Geordie, four years' Coe's junior, took European and Commonwealth titles in 1982 and the first world 1500m title the following summer in a race where that other great Briton, the 1980 Olympic 800m champion and 1500m bronze medallist Steve Ovett, finished fourth after a poor tactical run.

Coe's preparations for the LA Olympics were truncated - he was only back to jogging by December, and received some media criticism back home when he was given a place in the 1500m at the expense of the man who beat him in the national trials, Peter Elliott.

That said, Cram's own preparations for the 1984 Olympics had also been severely disrupted by an injury to his ankle which forced him to pull out of a race at Crystal Palace less than a month before the Olympics, making it appear unlikely that he would be able to take part.

Cram, however, proved his fitness in time and negotiated the heats and semi-finals in smoothly proficient style. Hopes rose for the young man who had forced his way up to the heady heights occupied in the 800 and 1500 by his compatriots Coe and Steve Ovett. After all, had he not won the world title in exuberant fashion despite having the early part of his 1983 season disrupted by injury?

Then again, by the time he toed the line in the 1500m final, Coe had run a series of perfectly calculated races in the same arena to take another Olympic silver in the 800m, this time behind the supremely gifted Joachim Cruz of Brazil. Whatever his difficulties in preparation, he was clearly prepared...

Quoted in Pat Butcher's The Perfect Distance - Ovett and Coe, The Record-Breaking Rivalry, which is currently being made into a film, Coe identified Cram as his main rival in a race where Ovett, the world record holder with his 3:30.77 from the previous summer, was an unlikely presence given his collapse with breathing difficulties in the earlier 800m racing at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

"I went in with one strategy," Coe recalled, "and that was, there was no way that with 600 metres to go was I going to let Crammy get in front of me, because by that stage of his career he was at his best when he was making an uncluttered, unfettered run for home.

"He grew in confidence. Get him out in front and he was a difficult athlete to beat. He didn't have electric acceleration like Ovett, but when he started to move, God!, he really did. And he liked hitting the front. I sensed that he was an athlete that liked taking it on from a distance."

An exhausted Steve Ovett steps onto the infield soon after the bell in the 1984 Olympic 1500m final as Seb Coe tracks the leader, Jose-Manuel Abascal ©Getty Images

American athlete Steve Scott, who would lead the middle part of the race before being swamped, recalled identifying Coe as the main threat. "The field was wide open. No one had really stood out. Coe did more so than anyone else, by how he ran the 800m. I knew that Ovett wasn't going to be a factor, going rhrough what he went through. I had respect for Cram, but he had had some injury problems and breaks in his training..."

Omar Khalifa of Sudan led the first lap - during which Coe stumbled after being caught from behind by Italy's Riccardo Matterazzi. History hangs by such threads - or cords.

Through 400m Scott took over a lead he held - led for best part of another two laps, but by the bell the lead was held by Spain's Jose-Manuel Abascal, followed, in order, by Coe, Cram, Ovett.

Before the field entered the back straight, Ovett slipped like a ghost onto the infield, waxen with effort. His distress would counterpoint Coe's triumph.

The defending champion, who had kept grimly to his game-plan of ensuring Cram did not get ahead of him, moved past the Spaniard as they entered the final bend, having glanced twice to his right and seen his high-stepping rival move out into the second lane in preparation to come past him.

That manoeuvre was prevented by the intensity of the defending champion's effort. As he maintained the lead around that final bend, Coe kept checking either side of him. After one final glance to his right as they reached the final straight he accelerated again towards the line, irresistible as a laser beam.

Within a couple of seconds the gap between them widened as Cram, his head rolling, was forced to accept silver rather than gold.

Seb Coe crosses the line - the first man to defend an Olympic 1500m title ©Getty Images

"Before the race, I thought Steve Cram was the guy who was going to stand in the way of me winning," said Coe after setting an Olympic record of 3:32.53.

"I thought the gold and silver would be fought out between us."

Cram told BBC's Tony Gubba: "I didn't really think I wouldn't get to the front in that race. I thought as some stage I would be at the front. I'm delighted to have been beaten by Seb in that time. I didn't think anyone would have predicted it would have been that fast. I just didn't have the legs in the end.

"It was a strong man's race, and Seb was the man. During the last week I said I'm not fit enough to run world record pace. I am fit enough to run what I thought would win, 3.38, 3.39. As it turned out it was nearly running world record pace. Which took me by surprise, I think. I was hoping it would be quick, but not that quick. But on the day I ran well. I'm satisfied. I'm delighted with my run considering all the problems I've had. And as I say, I'm glad it's Seb who won and not someone else."

Coe accepts Cram's congratulations in the aftermath of their Olympic 1500m final
©Getty Images

Cram's days of further glory lay a year ahead, when he would break world records at 1500m, 2,000m and the mile in the space of 19 days. But on that day, August 11 1984, there was never going to be any other winner.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.