The article by Dr Fitzpatrick titled The Olympic Legacy printed in November 20111 certainly provoked some controversy. Are the devotees of exercise on a hapless mission to postpone death? A starting point may be that anthropologists tell us that man was born to run and was built for persistence high endurance running.
Dr Roger Bannister gave the Chadwick lecture to the Sports Council in 1972 titled Sport, Physical Recreation, and the National Health.2 This article now seems strangely old fashioned but it did set some high ideals. Bannister was cautious in stating that there was no proven link between exercise and improved health. He did, however, bring attention to the research by Morris on the fact that active bus conductors suffered less coronary heart disease than sedentary bus drivers3 and the work by Rose on civil servants which demonstrated that the more physically active outside work had a two- to threefold less chance of having a coronary thrombosis.4
Dr Tom Bassler was a well known pathologist and athlete …