Sitting writing on the sixth floor of Millbank Tower this week, gazing out across a distinctly murky River Thames, I found my important work being interrupted by a man roaring.

It was not the first time this man had done it. He was standing alongside a colleague with a video camera and this startling vocal exercise was repeated at intervals as a succession of taken-aback athletes and ex-athletes, all of whom had gathered to promote a series of motivational films produced by their part-sponsors, BMW, were invited to mimic the uninhibited noise.

Most managed respectable roars of their own – even the prodigious 400m hurdler Perri Shakes-Drayton, although she required a little prompting. Steve Cram was deemed to have produced the finest roar in the jungle.

After the ice-breaking intros, there followed a series of quick-fire questions. John Wayne or Clint Eastwood? (Nobody went for Wayne.) Favourite Telly Tubby? (Mark Lewis-Francis went for La La, although when I asked him why he muttered something about it being his son Romeo's favourite, which I tend to think is cheating).

There were a few curved balls thrown. Shakes-Drayton, so far as I could tell, produced no answer to the following chirpy question: "Olympic gold medal or your mother?" I may have misheard, of course. I hope so.

I was musing on how far this format might go. "George Clooney or God?" "Would you kill to win?" "Hammer or tablets?" "What's the most disgusting and shameful thing you have ever done?"

But what I heard next was a question addressed to Cram of, thankfully a more conventional nature, asking merely what had been the highlight of his athletic career.

There was only a moment's hesitation before the athlete who won the first ever world 1500m title in 1983 and was the first to run 1500m in under 3min 30sec, the athlete who won three Commonwealth titles, two Europeans and an Olympic silver medal announced: "Breaking the world record in the mile".

Cram's highlight came in his annus mirabilis of 1985, in the Oslo Dream Mile, an event that carries its own fabled associations in just the same manner as the Wimbledon or FA Cup final.

A year earlier he had taken silver behind Sebastian Coe in the Olympic 1500 metre final. Three years later, hampered by a calf injury after resurgent form in the Olympic trials, he failed to earn a medal at the Seoul Olympics.

Had there been a major championship in 1985, however – up to and including the Alfa Centauri Games – Cram would have won it. And as he looks back on his career, it is that night in the Bislett Stadium (pictured with Cram posing next to the clock) that resounds with the greatest satisfaction.

Why? Partly because it was a world record, of course – 3min 46.32sec (rounded up from the initial digital display on the night) – and one which was to last for another eight years. Partly because the runners left in his high-stepping wake included New Zealand's John Walker, who in 1975 had become the first man to run the mile in under 3:50, and the man who had started the race in possession of the record – Coe, with his own four-year-old mark of 3:47.33.

But also, simply, because it was the mile.

"It was something I felt I had to do," he told me as we spoke after his rapid fire interview was in the can.

"When I was young my coach Jimmy Hedley used to go on to me about all the great milers. And when I was 17, Derek Ibbotson [the Yorkshireman who had set a world mile record in 1957] came to my house to talk to me about athletics, and that made a big impression on me."

Equally memorable for Cram was his attendance, as a runner who had broken the world mile record, at the event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the landmark achievement which transcended athletics to become part of England's cultural heritage – the breaking of the four-minute mile by Roger Bannister (pictured), who registered, perhaps, the most iconic time ever recorded for a sporting event: 3min 59.4sec.

"Being invited to that celebration made me feel like a member of a really exclusive club, and that's even more exciting than the record itself," Cram added.

"Sport always has an element that's about tradition and history. I think the mile still has that special feeling to it. To run a four-minute mile is still a benchmark for athletes."

The mile is part of our common parlance. We go the extra mile. We win by a country mile. We join the mile-high club (not all of us, but I've read about such things). We are miles better. When Sport Relief sets up a running event, it is the mile.

It is one of those sporting distances which has shaped contests through generations, in the same way as the four miles, 374 yards stretch between Putney and Mortlake, the Boat Race course, or indeed the 26 miles 385 yards established as the marathon distance since the 1908 London Olympics.

And Cram is far from being alone in his feelings about the unique appeal of the distance that has a history going all the way back to the ancient Romans – the word "mile" derives from the Latin word for a thousand – "mille" – and describes a distance of a thousand strides.

In the last month, a new campaign has been launched in the United States dedicated to restoring this most cherished of sporting measures to its nation's young athletes. Founded by Ryan Lamppa, a man who once ran the distance in 4:11 and has never forgotten it, bringbackthemile.com is seeking to mobilise support for altering the current marker of 1600m which was introduced within high school athletics during the 1980s in order to conform with metric measures as the old 440 yards tracks were being replaced by 400 metres tracks.

The initial launch on January 19 not only created "buzz" on the web and beyond, but generated almost 14,000 YouTube views of the "Bring Back the Mile" trailer and extended video as well as 1,000-plus Facebook fans and a Sports Illustrated "Faces in the Crowd" feature.


"We are heartened by the response that we have received since our launch," said Lamppa.

"People have a love and a passion for the Mile, and our website  bringbackthemile.com will be the Mile home on-line. Our front page feature is the high school state federation petition drive to replace the 1500 metres, or in many cases the 1600 metres, with the Mile at State Championships."

Lamppa told AP: "It's a distance people get. We can tell from the people who sign up with us. People are passionate about the mile. It really does have some prominence in our culture. Not only on signs and odometers, but there's something about the mile that's very different from any other track event."

Among those who have added their support is an American who not only "gets" the mile, but was for several years the pre-eminent miler in the world – Jim Ryun. In 1964 he became the first high school runner to break four minutes for the distance (pictured). And he believes it is a distance which resonates with spectators more than the "metric mile" of 1500 metres.


"You have to be an astute track fan to really understand that's about 110 yards short and you're gong to add anywhere from 15 to 17 seconds," Ryun says. "By the time you do all of that, you've lost a large share of the general public. Bring back the mile – that's the goal of the whole programme."

Ultimately, Lamppa and his fellow campaigners would like to see the mile in the Olympics, although he admits: "That would be beyond our wildest dreams."

The Olympics, as we have seen, is an infinitely adaptable organism. Sports come and go. Bye bye tug-of-war. Hello tennis.

And events within sports switch and change regularly – ask the aggrieved British cyclists who are now obliged to enter only one per event after their Bejing medal-fest. Ask Rebecca Romero, the Beijing gold medallist in the individual time trial whose event is no longer in the Games.

So the Olympic mile. Two traditions nurturing each other. Why on earth not?

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.