Pirie broke five world records in the course of his career, his annus mirabilis being 1956, when on 19 June in Bergen, Norway, he ran 13:36.8 for 5,000 m, beating Vladimir Kuts (USSR), and knocking 25 seconds from his own personal best.

Chataway suffered an attack of stomach cramp which caused him to slow down, and as Pirie and Ibbotson came out of the bend they found that Kuts had opened a gap.

Pirie and Ibbotson ran round Chataway but Kuts was able to exploit his advantage and won the race with a margin of 11 seconds, the largest ever for this event in Olympic history.

[1] The 1960 Rome Olympics were held in the height of the summer and Pirie and other leading British contestants asked to go on ahead of the main party, at their own expense, so that they might acclimatise to the heat.

In a radio interview with Eamonn Andrews soon after the games, the Australian runner Herb Elliott, referred to Pirie and Ibbotson who, having broken the world record for the mile in 1957, had never regained the same form and was not selected for Rome.

[8] The 1998 edition of The Guinness Book of Records lists Gordon Pirie under the "Greatest Mileage" entry, stating that he had run a total distance of 347,600 km (216,000 mi) in 40 years to 1981.

[9] In his book Running Fast and Injury Free[10] Pirie advocated running with initially making ground contact with the midfoot (as opposed to the usual style of long steps with landing on heels), 3–5 steps per second to reduce fatigue, damage to feet, and wasting of energy on vertical movement of body.