I know that the Finn led for a few hundred yards (including, as I recall, the slowest part of the race), but I don't believe that Landy's decision to sit back for a while before taking off less than two laps into the race and running most of the race from the front with Chataway in hot pursuit made it anything remotely like Bannister's absurd (and, by the standards of the day, disqualifiable) collaborations with world-class runners like Chataway and Brasher acting as Bannister's domestiques rather than his competitors (of which he generally had none, with the notable exception of the 1954 Commonwealth Games mile (which you apparently also classify as a "paced" sub-4, even by Landy).
To clarify, Bailey = first unpaced "first" sub-4
Landy's first sub-4 had a rabbit, and yes, his first sub-4 was more "pure" and much more a race than Bannister's first sub-4.
I'm still not sure I follow you. Do you then consider Bannister's sub-four in Vancouver to be "paced" because Landy led for more than 1500 meters (and, incidentally, broke his own world record for for an unpaced 1500 in the process)? And was Landy's sub-four in Vancouver "paced" because Landy ran behind Bannister over the last eighty yards or so? I understand that the words "paced" and "unpaced" can have changing and somewhat ill-defined meanings, but I don't believe those words would have been used for the Vancouver race to suggest that a planned and collaborative team effort had been used to produce fast times.
Although I haven't spent a lot of time researching the planning of the Turku race, I've never seen any reliable sources state that the Finn was a designated pacer, either for Landy personally or for the field as a whole. Nor am I familiar with any questions about the legitimacy of the race, which had serious competition to the end and at least six finishers, including the Finn who led the race early on. In Bannister's May 1954 exhibition, however, there was clearly not a race, there was a very highly planned pacing scheme using world-class noncompetitive athletes specifically to assist Bannister and nobody else, and -- at far as I know -- the exhibition lacked even the minimum number of good-faith finishers that I believe was generally required at that time for an "official" world record for a one-mile race.
Finally, in the 1956 race you've twice mentioned, Bailey had Ron Delaney and John Landy to "pace" off of for the first 1500m or so. But I'm not aware that Bailey's race was viewed as a paced race, nor do I believe it should be.
If we define "talent" as ability that was innately baked into an athlete (versus skills or fitness that was acquired through effort, mileage, hard work, coaching, etc.), then I think you have look at Jim Ryun or Hobbs Kessler. They seemed to achieve world-class times (for their respective era) without a decade of intense training.
But Jim Ryun did train ultra-intensely. The fact that he reached such heights so quickly might be because he did so as a schoolboy.
Herb Elliott had only been training seriously for 6 weeks when he broke the world junior mile record (4:06) in his first ever race. He then broke the Australian 800, 1500, 3000, and two mile, and three mile junior records (two mile and three mile were also world juinor records).
Barring injury or a temperamental decision to chuck it all, Elliott's potential seems limitless. So young and with so much already under his belt, he is fully expected to run the mile in 3:50 or less within a year or two by everyone from John Landy, whom Elliott has replaced as Australia's national sports hero, to his foremost rival, Melbourne Schoolteacher Mervyn Lincoln. Many track experts agree with Percy Cerutty that Elliott may well pocket, simultaneously, all the track titles from 800 to 10,000 meters. Even the marathon, 26 miles, 385 yards is not ruled out; Herb is already verging on marathon training.
Alas, he effectively retired less than 2 years later after the 1960 Olympics.
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