Oxford

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Oxford University had a cinder track at the Marston Ground from 1867 but it was built on clay and was often flooded, or became so soggy it was unusable. A decision was thus made to build a new track at Iffley Road. The ground, leased from Christchurch College, was levelled in September 1876. The contractor, Mr Hobdell, used nine inches of burnt ballast as a foundation and four inches of fine cinders as the top dressing. The work was finished only 48 hours before the first meeting, which was the University Freshmen's Sports on 29-30 November 1876. Like Marston, the track was one-third of a mile round. Iffley Road was rebuilt as a 440y track on Roger Bannister's initiative in the post-war period, and there is a photo in "First Four Minutes" of the new track under construction. It was opened by the Vice-Chancellor in 1950, two years after Bannister's speech proposing a new track and also had a 220y straight. He subsequently recorded the legendary 3:59.4 mile on 6th May 1954 on the track. There is some footage of the actual race in the film 'The Four Minute Mile'. The track was officially opened as a synthetic (Chevron 440) track on 4th May 1977 although the work had been carried out in 1976. It was resurfaced in 1989 with Spurtan V. The track is now fairly worn and the LJ/TJ and PV runways are particularly bad. The capacity of the stand has been reduced to 499 to save money because, as a result of the Hillsborough tragedy, the cost of maintaining ones with 500 or more is substantially higher. The DT/HT cage is situated in an adjoining field and was built in Feb 2000 to replace the old external which was lost when an all-weather pitch was built over it several years ago. Click here to read details of the revamped Bannister track officially opened by Seb Coe on 10th May 2007.

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