Leslie MacMitchell, who died March 21 at 85, was a schoolboy sensation cross-country racer who tied the world record for the indoor mile in 1941, and briefly became the leading candidate to be the first person to run the four-minute mile.

World War II put an end to his Olympic dreams though, and the years when MacMitchell would have been at his peak were spent as a deck officer aboard Navy cruisers, seeing action in both the European-African and Asian-Pacific theaters. His spiked training shoes were with his gear throughout the war, but, as he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004, “Running on the steel deck of a light cruiser is not the best way to train.”

Although MacMitchell returned to competitive racing in 1946, he never again threatened to break into the record books.

It was a minor miracle that he raced at all. Growing up in Manhattan, MacMitchell contracted diphtheria at age 7, and was confined to bed for four months. When he recovered, he had to learn to walk all over again. An article in Collier’s claimed, perhaps with exaggerated poignancy, that “the neighbors’ children wouldn’t play with him. Said he … couldn’t run fast enough to be a good guy in cops and robbers. Now the same brats pay to see their old chum run.”

MacMitchell excelled as a middle-distance runner at George Washington High School, where he won national honors in the 1,000-yard and cross-country races. As he matured, he began to win at the mile distance as well. At the 1937 national high and prep school indoor track and field championships, he won the mile a full 60 yards ahead of his nearest competitor. “My ambition, like all boy runners, I suppose, is to run in the 1940 Olympics,” he told the Hartford Courant after the race. It was not to be.

Big things were expected of MacMitchell – “Loping Leslie” to headline writers – when he matriculated at New York University in 1938, but it was not until 1941, his junior year, that he went from promising to great. That year, he swept every major mile championship in the country, equaled the world indoor mile record at 4:07.4,and won the Sullivan Award, presented annually to the nation’s outstanding amateur athlete. In one stretch from 1941-42,he won 26 straight mile races.

Because he was only 20 when he tied the record, sportswriters and coaches expected continued improvement – milers typically peak in their mid-20s.Helpful advice came from The New York Sun’s track columnist, George Trevor: “What he must cultivate is the ability to sustain a stiffer pace over the first three quarters of a mile race. That’s the key to a four-minute-flat clocking.”

But there was a war on, and MacMitchell was eager to serve. He actually had to consult three doctors before he found one who would approve him for Navy officer’s school – like many milers, he had an abnormally slow heart rate, 38 to 43 beats per minute, just over half of normal.

At the end of the war, hope ran high that MacMitchell would return to form. The fastest indoor mile record stood at 4:06.4.MacMitchell won the Wanamaker Mile at Madison Square Garden in 1946, but his time was a disappointing 4:19 – nowhere near competitive. He raced for a few more years without distinction.

MacMitchell worked for a few years in the registrar’s office at NYU, then took a job as Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley’s executive assistant – among his duties were coaching running in spring training, and setting up a summer camp for kids at the Dodgers spring training facility in Vero Beach, Fla. He eventually became an executive with the College Board and, after he retired to San Jose, an education consultant.

Leslie MacMitchell
Born September 20, 1920, in Manhattan; died March 21; survived by his wife, Jill, two daughters, and a son.