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STEVE PREFONTAINE
As a freshman at Marshfield High School in Coos Bay, Oregon, Prefontaine initially found some success in cross country running. With help from the Marshfield cross country coach, Walt McClure, he placed 53rd in the state meet. Prefontaine ran a personal best time of 5:01 in the mile and 10:08 in the two mile his freshman year. Determined to improve, Prefontaine undertook a high-mileage training plan during the summer. The plan was ultimately successful, and the following year he placed 6th in the year-end state meet. His sophomore season was similarly unspectacular, save for the district cross country meet when the diminutive Pre hung with the state mile champion and the state cross country champion for all but the last 300 yards. He followed up with a 4:31 indoor mile, but his fourth-place finish in that spring?s district track meet failed to qualify him for the high school state meet in his primary event?the two-mile.
He continued rigorous training at the end of the cross country season in preparation for track. His training was too strenuous and the overworked Prefontaine failed to qualify for the state meet. However, his junior and senior years proved highly successful, with Prefontaine winning every meet, including states, and setting a national high school record his senior year in the two mile race with a time of 8:41.5 (breaking Rick Riley's 8:48.4 from 1966). Overall, Prefontaine broke 19 National High School Records in track.
Following high school, Prefontaine enrolled at the University of Oregon in order to continue his running under coach Bill Bowerman, who would later co-found Blue Ribbon Sports, the precursor to the Nike shoe company. He joined the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity as an undergraduate. After his freshman year, in which he finished 3rd in the NCAA National Cross Country meet, he suffered only two more defeats in college (both in the mile), winning three Division I NCAA Cross Country championships and four straight three-mile titles in Track and Field. He was then the best known athlete in Eugene, becoming a hero to all who watched his races. He was known for going out hard and not relinquishing the lead, a tactic that his fans and fellow competitors admired. The loud chants of "Pre! Pre! Pre!" became a staple at Hayward Field, a mecca for track and field in the USA. Many fans wore shirts proclaiming "LEGEND", which became a sort-of war cry for him. Other fans of his began wearing shirts proclaiming to "Stop Pre" at his meets. Prefontaine gained national attention, and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated at age 19.
He set the American record in the 5000 meter race, the event that took him to the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich. However, Prefontaine was passed with 150m remaining in the 5000m race by eventual winner Lasse Viren and silver medalist Mohamed Gammoudi. He lost a third place position to Britain's hard-charging Ian Stewart in the last 15 meters of the race after having led nearly the entire last mile in a toe-to-toe battle with Viren. Returning for his senior year at the University of Oregon, Prefontaine ended his collegiate career with only three defeats in Eugene, all in the mile. It was during his collegiate career that he began to fight the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) which demanded that athletes who wished to remain "amateur" for the Olympics not be paid for appearances in track meets, even though they drew large crowds that generated millions of dollars. At this time the AAU was taking away amateur status if athletes were endorsed in any way. Because Prefontaine was accepting free clothes and footwear from Nike, he was subjected to the AAU's ruling. Bowerman, who also fought the AAU's restrictions, began calling Prefontaine "Rube" because of his naivety and stubbornness.
On May 30, 1975, on the return from a party and dropping off of a friend, Frank Shorter, Prefontaine was driving down a familiar road, Skyline Boulevard, near Hendricks Park, when his car, a gold 1973 MGB,[2] swerved left and hit a rock wall along the side of the street. The overturned car trapped Prefontaine underneath it. The first witness on the scene, who lived nearby, heard two cars, and then a crash. When he ran outside he was almost run over by the second car. He found Prefontaine flat on his back, still alive but pinned beneath the wreck. Attempting to lift the vehicle off Prefontaine did not work, so he ran to get more help. By the time he returned with others, the weight of the car had crushed Prefontaine's chest, killing him. He was 24 years old. An exact cause for the accident has never been determined, since for Pre's car to have been lifted and overturned as it was on the far side of the road, Pre would have needed to swerve violently at the last moment and strike the wall at a specific and unnatural angle.
Pre’s spirit lives on today in track athletes that were not even born when he did. He will always be remembered as the gutsiest American runner.
WHO IS YOUR HERO?
steve prefontaine
