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Wes Santee, the KU athlete who nearly ran the mile in less than four minutes in the 1950s, chatted online with KUsports.com readers this morning. Santee ran track and cross country for KU in the 1950s, and set national records in the 1500-meter run and the mile. Santee was the first to vocally predict he'd be the first person in the world to break the four-minute mile barrier; his three fastest mile times were were 4:00.5, 4:00.6, and 4:00.7.

Welcome to our online chat with Wes Santee.

The chat took place on Wednesday, April 14, at 9:00 AM and is now closed, but you can read the full transcript on this page.

Moderator: We'll start our chat in just a few minutes. Thanks for joining us. You may submit questions at any time during this chat.

Alan, St. Louis: Just wondering are you still a big Jayhawk fan and do attend any KU events? Also, do you think KU can become a national power in track and field again?

Santee: Yes, I have season tickets to the football and basketball games. I attended the KU relays for example every year, and in September of every year, the track team gets together at an out-of-Lawrence site, such as Salina or Wichita, and I've attended those events. The other thing is that I've attended lots of KU functions; I've been to a golf tournament in Pheonix that was sponsored by the alumni association, I've been to the KU events abroad sponsored by the alumni association, and here in the states I've gone to other events. I read the paper every day for the Jayhawks. As far as the national power again, I think Coach Redwine is an outstanding coach, he has a great track background. He came out of the University of Arkansas program, which in recent years has had one of the more outstanding programs. I'm very confident that of the current coaches, he is an outstanding one, and I think that since his arrival, the program is slowly but surely getting better and better.

Chris, Shawnee: You were less than a second away (on several occasions) from having your name imortalized instead of Roger Bannister's. Is that something you've had to reconcile yourself to over the years-- and if so, how did you do it?

Santee: Well being so close to the four minute miles so many times and then to be the one not to break it was letting the air out of a sack the day it happened. I was really disappointed. but if you look at the athletic systems in Europe, they run an event they have trained for for several weeks. Here, track and field and many of the other sports are more of a team sport during the year, so Kansas would be running against Missouri, Oklahoma State, every weekend. And it was important to win the team championship, so I would run the mile, the half-mile, in order that we could win the team championship. In the relay season, you would run four races in a weekend. Two each day. And consequently, the Europeans don't even think about doing something like that. And again at that point in time, if I didn't run the anchor of a mile or half-mile for the relay, we didn't have anyone else on the team who could pick up that spot. I'm not sorry that I did that. I'm sorry that we didn't have the opportunity to bring other milers who had been competitive together like the British did. If we had done that, we might have broken the four minute mile. But people from other schools were not going to help me break the mile. ... I'm sorry I didn't do it, but I'm glad I was able to help my teammates win so many races. And we won a lot of wristwatches. The differences in the college system as compared to the European system make it a whole lot different in when you train and when you run. And when you run an individual track meet, each week you were pointing for a different challenge for the team championship, which is different that the Europeans were doing. They did a nationalism thing - they all got together to be first, but we don't do that here in America. it's up to each individual school to try to point for something for the championship.

James, Boston, Mass.: I saw where they are already working on making the new book "The Perfect Mile" into a movie. Who would you like to see play you in the movie?

Santee: I have no ideas. The answer is what I know at this point, which is they have signed a contract to do a movie. The people who did Seabiscuit, like Frank Marshall, are who are considering the movie. I have seen a review of the book, and they said they should compare the Perfect Mile book to the Seabiscuit book; the Perfect Mile book is a better story.... A young man from California came and spent a week with me and picked up some of my traits - it was a European movie, and it was more of a documentary than a real movie. It was called "The Four Minute Mile." It's available on video, but it's long. It was a very lengthy story. I think it would have been in the late 70s or early 80s. It was quite accurrate, I might add. I don't remember the young man's name who played me in that. He of course had long hair and everything, and the day before he came to see me here in Lawrence, he got his hair cut. He had to wear a crew cut for several weeks. They are still making the screen play, so they're not that far along, but I hope they find someone who will do it well. I don't know if in a movie they could use former reel film. I would hope that would be a possibility. I would hope they could use old film of our races. I think it would be neat if they could do that.

Steve, Lawrence: Do you think the pursuit of the four-minute mile would have been as dilligent by others if you weren't so outspoken about planning to do it? Also, do you still talk to Bannister and Landy these days?

Santee: Let me answer the second question first. I have had letters in years past from them, but I have not been in current contact with them except through the writer of the book, "The Perfect Mile." One of the things we did when talking to the press and the coaches is to state what we actually thought. If we were asked what we thought we can do, we told them... Some of that translated into being cocky, but we were really just being confident about what our training had brought us. Every place we went, it was "do you think you can break the record?" Well, yeah, we can. It became apparent to us that we certainly could break the four minute mile. So we did talk about it, and it did put a lot of pressure on the subject and on myself. You go to a track meet expecting to run a great time and it rains or hails, and the track is all messed up, but you have to still get out there and run.... I remember going to California to run at the halftime of the Pro Bowl football game. And we were well trained but the colliseum track was standing full of water and we couldn't run. So there were disappointing things several times that kept us from fulfilling what we thought our potential was.

Ken, Lawrence: What was the story behind your race against frat brothers from Tonganoxie and Lawrence?

Santee: The first national cross country championship race that I ran was in 1952, in East Lansing, Mich. I finished 36th. During our training for that race, I was running as fast as Herby Semper was running, so I should have been up there with him at the finish. But I had a mental lapse during the race and did poorly. We landed at Lawrence airport, and when we landed there were two carloads of my fraternity brothers waiting for me with "Helloooo 36!" ... Having the firery temperament I had at the time, I said I could outrun all of them. That debate continued for two of three days. I told them I would race them from Lawrence to Kansas City with each of them running a mile. The next year we did not go to the championship, and the debate came up again, and we decided they could run each half a mile. So we picked Tonganoxie, 14 miles away, and they stopped their smoking and drinking for two or three weeks and we had quite a race. It was 22 degrees above zero. Had I been able to continue on for a marathon, I was running at Olympic record marathon pace. It was not by any means a phony race.

Dale, McLouth: Are you thinking about running for office again?

Santee: I ran for state representative in Jefferson County once. It was when Morris Kay was speaker of the House. It would have been in the '70s and the answer is no. I still have a keen interest in state and national politics. And with Jim Ryun being one of our representatives, and Sen. Roberts is a marine and I'm a marine, so I keep in touch with those guys frequently. At this point in my life, I'm enjoying life and I don't need to get involved in an office.

Brian, Normal, Okla.: How good was Hershberger?

Santee: In college, he was primarily a quarter-miler. He was a competitor but not in the national ratings as far as a quarter mile was concerned. After college, he became a competitor of special events. In order to get various kinds of publicity and promotion, he would see how fast he could play 18 holes of golf, for example. He would do competition with other people. He made a lot of money in the oil business and gave a lot of money to Wichita State and KU. Hopefully his activities gave a lot of scholarships to a lot of people. I don't think he even competed his senior year, but he ran the quarter-mile and on the relay teams, things like that, and he was a good quarter-miler but not a record holder at that time.

Larry, Olathe: Wes: Do you remember running in the Anthony Relays on the 1/2 mile "horse" track in 1950. I was a freshman at Argonia then and will always have the memory of running in the same race with you on that unusual track.

Santee: The Anthony relays I remember very well. The northwest curve on the track was down so low that you couldn't see the runners from the stands. It was my first race, and I got third and won a red ribbon. I was so proud of that because it was the first time I had ever run in a big track meet. It was attended by all of the southwest Kansas high schools. For about ten years, from 1957 or so, I started the Anthony relays when they had moved to a formal high school track. Running on a dirt track, of course, in the 50s - there were a lot of those that we ran on. It's a lot different than running on the quarter-mile track that a lot of high schools have today. Anthony was always one of my favorite towns to go to.

Moderator: We'd like to thank Mr. Santee for his time this morning, and thanks to our readers for submitting the questions.