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“I could see there was an advantage in having the shoe as light as possible.”
Those are not the words of Sabastian Sawe, who became the first person to win a marathon in less than two hours at the 2026 London Marathon. They are the words of Sir Roger Bannister, who in 1954 became the first person to break the four-minute mile.
Running has always been about shoes and new technology. And shoes have always been about running.
Sir Roger got his shoes from GT Law and Son, a British company. It had a factory in Towcester, Northamptonshire and a workshop in Wimbledon, London.
GT Law was an athlete who thought that the running shoes he wore could be better, so he started making them himself. He set up the business around 1910 and his son, Charles, also joined.
GT Law’s running shoes were popular with athletes during the 1948 London Olympics. It also made football and rugby boots.
Sir Roger and a friend, Eustace Thomas, who was a fell-walker, approached GT Law and Son about making shoes to his specification for an attempt to break the four-minute mile. Sir Roger and Thomas wanted to get the weight of each shoe down from six to four ounces, roughly 113g.
The shoes were made by Charles Law at GT Law’s workshop in Wimbledon. They ended up with a shoe where the leather and the running spikes were unusually thin.
On May 6 1954 at the Iffley Road track in Oxford, Sir Roger used the shoes in a race for the first time.
This is Sir Roger’s account of approaching the finish line in his autobiography:
“My body had long since exhausted all its energy, but it went on running just the same. The physical overdraft came only from greater willpower. This was the crucial moment when my legs were strong enough to carry me over the last few yards as they could never have done in previous years. With five yards to go the tape seemed almost to recede. Would I ever reach it?
“Those last few seconds seemed never-ending. The faint line of the finishing tape stood ahead as a haven of peace. The arms of the world were waiting to receive me, if only I reached the tape without slackening my speed. I leapt at it like a man taking his last spring to save himself from the chasm that threatens to engulf him.”
His time was 3:59.4. Sir Roger’s new shoes may have been the difference between breaking four minutes or not.
In 2015, those shoes were sold at auction for £266,500. Sir Roger donated the proceeds to charity.
Yet despite its role in this historic achievement - and the apparent value of the shoes - GT Law and Son is long gone. By 1970 the business had shut down as a wave of new international brands piled into the shoe market.
However, it had set a path that others could follow.
Shoes and new technology could help humans to do remarkable things. And that is an incredible way to market and sell a product.
Just do it
Nike was always about running.
Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, was a runner. Every evening after work he would go for a run to keep fit and clear his mind. “I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place,” Knight wrote in Shoe Dog, his book about how Nike was built.
It was on a run that Knight had the idea of Nike.
