Diane Charles

Until the age of 19, pioneering British women’s athlete Diana Leather had set her mind on being a hockey player. That was until she was fascinated by the track and field events at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, after which she decided to join her local athletics club, Birchfield Harriers. Her coach pushed her into longer distances, which, for women in those days, were 880 yards and cross-country. Within a year of taking up the sport, she ran a world best 5:02.6 for the mile at White City, knocking over seven seconds off the previous record.

On 26 May 1954, Leather fell just short of becoming the first woman under five minutes for the mile, when she ran 5:00.2. Three days later, however, at the Midlands Women’s Championship at Birmingham, and barely an hour after setting a new British 800 metre record, she became the world’s first woman under that magical five minutes for the mile, when she clocked 4:59.6. While Roger Bannister’s sub-four minute mile 23 days earlier received media coverage that ran for days and weeks, and turned him into an overnight celebrity, Leather’s achievement merited just a single paragraph in The Times. She received the same amount of column inches as Chris Chataway, who set an unofficial word best mark for the 11/2 miles at Motspur Park the same day.

Women’s athletics was so far behind the men in those days, and it would not be until 1967 that the IAAF recognised women’s world records for the mile and 1500 metres. At the Olympics the longest individual event open to women, until 1960, was the 200 metres, but when they re-introduced the 800 in Rome, Leather competed in her one and only Olympics. With her best days behind her, she was unfortunately eliminated in her first heat. Sadly she never got to run her favourite distance, the mile (or 1500 metres), in a major international competition.

Despite her Olympic failure, Leather (later Charles) won silver medals in the 800 at the 1954 and 1958 European Championship, earned five AAA titles (880 yards in 1954-55, 1957 and mile in 1956-57), and was also the British cross-country champion four years in succession 1953-56. She lowered the world best mark for the mile four more times, and her final “record” of 4:45.0 stood for seven years. She also set three world records in the 880 yards.

A former microanalyst at Birmingham University, Charles quit athletics after the Roma Olympics to concentrate on her careers as a teacher and social worker, before moving to live and retire in Cornwall.

Personal Best: 800 – 2:06.6 (1958).