Four men go sub-4 at the 2025 Bannister Miles
A great day of racing brought the number of sub-4s at Iffley Road to 16
The Bannister Miles meeting, organised by Oxford University Cross Country Club (OUCCC) is going from strength to strength, and at OpenTrack we are proud to be a core part of making the performances happen.
In this update:
Sub-4 miles at Iffley Road: a history lesson
Elite performances, and hours of miles
Making competition happen: a look behind the scenes
Event Organisation — British Milers Club
Photofinish — Running2Time
Live Streaming — 247.tv
With the 2025 event a major success, we thought it would be good to take a look back at the event’s history, the best of the most recent edition, and the people who make the magic happen!
Sub-4 miles at Iffley Road: a history lesson
Oxford played host to perhaps the most famous event in British sporting history on 6 May 1954, when Sir Roger Bannister became the first person to break four minutes for the mile on the Iffley Road track.
OUCCC started to organise an Iffley Festival of Miles in 2010, with entries on OpenTrack from 2022, and the 70th anniversary in 2024 saw the event rebranded and professionalised with the support of the university and the Bannister family.
Bannister Miles continues to go from strength-to-strength every year. With eight sub-4 miles in two years, and numerous PBs, particularly amongst junior athletes, we hope this event will become the target event for early season openers. Working with the BMC we are proud to put on an event which is professional, exciting, and enjoyable for athletes and spectators alike. Roll on 2026, we can’t wait!
Tom Renshaw, Event Organiser
Elite performances, and hours of miles
The day’s program started with a morning mass road mile open to anyone, including a multi-generational family race with kids as young as 2 enjoying the excitement.
With 24 mile races across nearly four hours of racing, some 310 athletes (from as far afield as Mexico, Australia, and Chile) registered performances, including in the men’s and women’s steeplechase miles, back for a second year after their global debut at the meeting last year.
After plenty of age group and sub-elite racing, the A races were the highlight of the program at the end of the day, with Holly Dixon running out winner in the women’s A race, a 4:40.05 clocking taking more than 20 seconds off her previous best.
With the sun making an appearance for the final few races, and the men’s A race commenced with temperature perfect for racing. Wirral AC athlete Joe Wigfield had a clear lead as the pacemaker dropped out at 1000 metres, but a strong chase behind saw three others go sub-4.
The Bannister family have played a huge role in promoting the event and were there again this year to present prizes and enjoy the action.
Making competition happen: a look behind the scenes
OpenTrack and Oxford University Athletic Club have very deep connections; our founder was a member in the late 1980s and we’ve been taking entries and doing results for all of their competitions for several years.
On this occasion, we were present to do the often unseen job of making sure all the systems needed to make a modern meeting run were talking to each other — and to enjoy meeting people who’ve trained and raced at Oxford in decades past! Perhaps the most illustrious guest was David Hemery, sadly not competing, but we’re working on him for next year’s masters race!
Event Organisation — British Milers Club
As the Iffley Festival of Miles got bigger and bigger, it became too much for students to organise, so for last year’s 70th anniversary the university formally became involved and the BMC took responsibility for the track races, organising entries, programme and all the officials. The team is led by Matthew Fraser Moat, also an ex-Oxford University middle distance runner, who trained under BMC founder Frank Horwill.
The BMC has always had Oxford as its spiritual home, we feel that the current format of the Bannister Miles is perfect, and we hope to be associated with the meeting for many years to come. The current format of just miles seems to attract just the right number of people, and it is a good mix of people as well.
Matthew Fraser Moat, BMC Treasurer and Meeting Director
We can happily reveal that from this summer onwards, BMC membership management is moving to OpenTrack, allowing us to fuse entries and results — for next year’s races, we will hopefully have a lot less work to do!
Photofinish - Running2Time
Photofinish services were provided very professionally by Running2Time, set up by Mark Delgado, a Level 4 photofinish expert who has worked at World Championships. We liaised closely throughout the meeting, as there were a couple of extra details, such as recording 1500 splits as well as mile times.
Live Streaming — 247.tv
The meeting live stream (linked below) was produced by 247.tv, who cover numerous athletics events including the UK indoor and outdoor championships.
OpenTrack made all timetables, start lists, and results available to 247.tv via our APIs — the same technology used by our own TV Console — and they connected up a couple of days ahead of the competition to test things, so were able to pull in the information into their own graphics engine, offering a professional TV-like experience for anyone not in the stadium, and for all of the athletes to view afterwards.
We’re now able to deliver a fully professional TV-like streaming service for just a couple of thousand pounds, with production in our in-house studio, and three cameramen on site; this opens things up to anyone not in the stadium, and in turn lets events like this bring in sponsors.
Adrian Battersby - Founder, 247.tv
OUCCC and OUAC are full of tech-savvy students and they also remember the basics - like printing out QR codes to tell everyone where they can find the results and the live stream!
Overall this was an extremely well-run and enjoyable meeting for everyone involved, which achieved all of its goals. We look forward to being part of it in years to come!
As always, if you have any feedback, requests, or want help bringing your athletics into the 21st century, feel free to get in touch at info@opentrack.run.