With his sub-four minute mile Bannister broke

[sanjaylakhani]

Source -Majortests.com

With his sub-four minute mile Bannister broke a psychological barrier, inspiring thousands of others to attempt overcoming seemingly insurmountable hurdles.
A. inspiring thousands of others to attempt overcoming
B. inspiring thousands of others to attempt to overcome
C. inspiring thousands of others to overcome
D. and inspired thousands of others to attempt to overcome
E. and inspired thousands of others to attempt overcoming

How is D correct here.... what's wrong with C

Inspiring as in C- comes after a comma and so acts as a participle modifier and modifies the previous clause

Anybody?

[carlostan]

I think D is the correct answer because of the verb's tense in the first part of the sentence. The first part of the sentence says "Bannister broke". Here, the verb is past tense, which takes away options A, B, and C. Option E doesn't work because "to attempt overcoming" isn't as clear as "to attempt to overcome".

...Hopefully I'm right. I'd hate to be wrong on my first post here.

[JonathanSchneider]

You're correct that verb parallelism might be good here; however, for that to be the deciding issue we would need to eliminate the comma. Unfortunately, the comma is not underlined, so it's staying. As a result, the only good option is B.