It was shortly before 11:30pm in the Land of the Midnight Sun when Steve Cram – in the words of the BBC television commentator David Coleman – “came majestically striding away” down the home straight of the Bislett Stadium to “crack the world record for the mile.”
On that never-to-be-forgotten Saturday evening 40 years ago – on 27 July 1985 – the tall, long-striding Briton not so much cracked the global mark for the classic distance as cast it to all four corners of the grand old Oslo arena.
Having metaphorically run the legs off Sebastian Coe, who faded to third behind the Spaniard Jose-Luis Gonzalez, Cram crossed the line in 3:46.32, more than a full second (1.01) inside the world record set by his celebrated compatriot in Brussels four years earlier.
And so ended the night of nights inside the Norwegian citadel of track and field.
Three world records had fallen in the space of three hours in the 1985 edition of the Bislett Games.
Metronomic magic – first sub-31-minute 10,000m
First up was an Oslo resident in the women’s 10,000m.
Roared on by a capacity crowd of 19,231, Ingrid Kristiansen pushed back the boundaries of women’s distance running for a third time in 12 months.
Having become the first female to break 15 minutes for 5000m with her 14:58.89 clocking at the 1984 Bislett Games and threatened to crack 2:20:00 for 26.2 miles before finishing with a 2:21:06 world record in the 1985 London Marathon, the 29-year-old Norwegian produced a barrier-breaking 10,000m performance on home ground.
Taking the lead after 2200m, Kristiansen metronomically reeled off laps of 74 seconds before closing with a final circuit of 67.89 to break Olga Bondarenko’s world record of 31:13.78.
She also broke the 31-minute barrier, crossing the line in 30:59.42. “I would have been very disappointed if the time had been over 31 minutes,” Kristiansen confessed.
The former cross country skiing prodigy earned a place in track and field posterity as the first runner, male or female, to simultaneously hold world records at 5000m, 10,000m and the marathon.
The gods eventually favour Aouita
Said Aouita also demonstrated an impressively broad range, running under 1:44 for 800m, sub-3:30 for 1500m, under 7:30 for 5000m and sub-27:30 for 10,000m.
The smooth-striding Moroccan won 5000m Olympic gold in Los Angeles in 1984 and 800m bronze in Seoul four years later.
The first of his four world records came in between the Kristiansen and Cram shows at Bislett – 11 days after the epic 1500m duel in Nice which the victorious Cram (3:29.67) and Aouita (3:29.71) became the first men to break 3:30.
Aouita reached the bell in the 5000m in 12:05.96, a huge 3.29 behind Dave Moorcroft’s split time en route to his 13:00.41 world record at Bislett in 1982.
Unlike the Briton, however, the magical young runner from Fes was not on a solo mission.
Pushed by former 1500m world record-holder Sydney Maree, Aouita flew round the final lap in a phenomenal 54.4, breaking Moorcroft’s record by 0.01 with 13:00.40. Maree clocked 13:01.15 as runner up.
“I thought the gods were against me in world record attempts,” said Aouita, relieved to have finally made a global mark.
Though disappointed to have missed breaking 13 minutes by a whisker, his time would come with a barrier-breaking 12:58.39 in Rome two years later.
“Something to aim for over all these years”
As for Cram, he was at the peak of his powers as he lined up alongside Coe for the hugely anticipated Dream Mile, scheduled for an 11:26pm start, local time, to suit US television.
Winner of the 1500m at the inaugural World Athletics Championships in Helsinki in 1983, Cram had been seriously hampered by a calf injury in the build up to the 1984 Olympics in LA, taking a consolation silver medal as the princely Coe emerged from two years of illness and injury to become the first man in modern history to successfully defend the Olympic 1500m title.
After years of learning his craft while Coe and Steve Ovett serially rewrote the world record book, the 24-year-old in the yellow and black Jarrow and Hebburn Athletics Club vest showed with his momentous 1500m run in Nice that he was a Great British middle-distance trailblazer in his own right.
Over the course of the four laps in Oslo, on the track where Coe had set four of his eight outdoor world records, Cram proved a majestic class apart.
Despite his performance on the Cote d’Azur, the younger Briton was chasing a victory rather than the clock. Into his eighth season on the international circuit, Cram had yet to claim Coe’s prized scalp at 1500m or the mile, having only got the better of him over 800m at Gateshead in 1983.
Coe had been out of sorts on that occasion, and was clearly not as his best in what proved to be Cram’s dream of a Dream Mile in Oslo.
Always assured and in control, Cram settled behind pacemakers James Mays and Mike Hillardt, while Coe took two laps to claw his way up into the slipstream of his compatriot.
Cram could easily have cut loose when the pace slowed from 56.1 and 57.8 to 59.3 on the third lap but kept checking over his shoulder for Coe, who had no response when Cram stretched clear down the back straight on the last lap.
Blasting round the final circuit in 53.0, Cram eased across the line in 3:46.32 – 1.01 inside the world record – with Gonzalez second in 3:47.79 and Coe third in 3:49.22.
“I honestly thought we were a little too slow to get the record,” Cram confessed. “I didn’t think I would run a 53 last lap. All I thought about was winning, not the world record.”
Asked by Jim Rosenthal of ITV how his record run in Oslo compared with that in Nice, Cram replied: “Having raced Said in the 1500m in Nice and Seb in this one and got world records in both is just beyond belief, really.
“But this one was just a little bit extra special because Seb’s always been up there for me. He’s always been something for me to aim for over all these years.”
There was to be another world record for the rampant Cram in Budapest eight days later: 4:51.39 over 2000m.
His mile in Oslo brought the tally of world records at Bislett to 45 – continuing a tradition stretching back to 1924.
Adriaan Paulen of the Netherlands, the future President of the IAAF (now World Athletics), set the first one that year, clocking 1:03.8 for 500m in an arena built principally as a speed skating arena.
The Norwegian capital was still known as Christiania at the time. It became Oslo in 1925.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage