The distressing attempt by Jim Peters, the world record holder and race leader by 17 minutes, to finish the marathon at the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver was one of the most gruesome sights ever seen in a sports stadium. 

He failed, nearly died, and never ran again. The biggest broadcast audience for a single sporting event tuned in, by radio or television, for the "Mile of the Century", a showdown between the only two men who had broken the four-minute barrier, England's Roger Bannister and Australia's John Landy. 

For the first time, the United States showed live television coverage of a sporting contest with no Americans in it.

Soon after Bannister's famous victory, in which both men ran inside four minutes, the overseas broadcasts ended. The global audience missed the sickening end to the marathon.

The race had been run in punishing heat which was 28 degrees at the start. Three Australians dropped out early and failed to finish, along with seven others in a field of 16. 

The eventual winner, Scotland's Joe McGhee, was left behind by Peters and his great friend and team-mate Stan Cox at around 10 miles.

Peters, a tough working-class Londoner and one of the great marathon runners of the 20th century, had no idea he was so far ahead when he came to the last half-mile. 

He was 17 minutes clear of McGhee, yet he thought Cox was his nearest pursuer a few hundred yards away. Instead, Cox was on his way to hospital, a victim of the heat.

Peters had taken no water during the race for fear that it would cause diarrhoea. He remembered falling over on the track once, then his mind went blank until he came round in hospital. He fell 12 times in all inside the stadium.

The Guardian’s man on the spot, Frank Keating, wrote of the "grotesquely hideous ballet" that nearly killed Peters.

His head rolled from side to side as he gasped for breath, and he fell to the track with a lap still to go. 

For a full two minutes he lay motionless. A hush fell on the horrified crowd. Police and doctors gathered round, knowing that to help him meant his disqualification. 

Other events came to a halt and the athletes saw the gallant Peters climb unsteadily to his feet. He tried to run on but almost immediately he was down again. The courage which had driven Peters brought him to his feet. From side to side of the track he reeled in his agony. Down again and then up. A few anguished paces and down again.

Fifteen minutes after he entered the stadium, he had covered only 150 yards. At last he crossed what he thought was the finishing line. Mick Mays, the English masseur, wrapped his arms around the exhausted runner and carried him from the track. 

Mays, too, had mistaken the finishing line. There was still 220 yards to go. Six doctors, including Bannister, crowded round the disqualified Peters, and he was given oxygen. Peters, his skin a deathly mottled grey and a collar of foam streaming from his mouth, was borne away on a stretcher.

The Daily Express said more than 20 women fainted.

Bannister was a doctor - he later became a prominent neurologist - and was on hand to help Peters at trackside and, over the next few days, during his recovery in hospital.  

Peters was unconscious for three hours, in hospital for several days and was in his own words "lucky not to die" as a result of the race. Bannister travelled back to England with him.

"Roger Bannister told me it was a miracle I'd survived," Peters said later. "I must have been dehydrated for miles." 

Reports at the time blamed heatstroke, but a more recent investigation of all the medical records suggested hyperthermia-induced fatigue and heat-induced brain damage might have been the cause.

Peters did not realise he had mistaken the finish line until the next day.

At the age of 35, Peters held the world record right through to the next Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, but on doctors' orders he never raced again after that fateful afternoon on Saturday August 7, 1954.

He was sent a special gold medal by the Duke of Edinburgh "as a token of admiration for a most gallant marathon runner". Peters ran a successful optician's business until his retirement. He suffered giddiness and his "Vancouver headache" until his death in 1999.

The "triumph and disaster" of Bannister and Peters made it without question the most remarkable single session of athletics in the history of the Commonwealth Games.