Pre: The Story of America's Greatest Running Legend, Steve Prefontaine Read online

  “I used to see Pre training while on my way to work,” a longtime Coos Bay resident recalls. “He used to run through Mingus Park, past the swimming pool and then up the steep Tenth Street hill and beyond. It’s an odd thing, but although I saw him running the streets and trails of Coos Bay about a hundred times, I don’t think I ever saw him running downhill. Seems like he was always going up.”

  Pre started to feel that special responsibility to his roots and “his people” that was to hallmark his career in both Coos Bay and Eugene, at the University of Oregon. On his morning runs, toward North Bend up the highway, he shared an affinity with other early toilers. “A couple of guys I know who wave at me,” he said. “Some of the bread men, garbage men, and street cleaners.”

  “I Want to Be Number One”

  Pirate Stadium began to fill for track meets, and Steve gave them a show, though he didn’t run any victory laps while at Marshfield. He drew the fans, partly because they wanted to follow the fortunes of this lad who was never satisfied, and partly because they sensed that Pre was something special.

  “A lady came into the store where I worked,” Steve’s mother remembers, “and said, ‘Mrs. Prefontaine, you should go to the meets. Your son is Olympic stuff.’ I still remember the words.”

  “What I want to be is to be number one,” is how Pre so aptly put it.

  Senior year began with an easy defense of his cross country title and aggressive goals for a 9:00 two-miler. He wanted by the end of his senior year to run a 1:52 half-mile, a 3:56 mile, and an 8:40 two-mile. McClure set the workouts with those goals in mind, and the early ones, at times, Pre could not finish. But he drove himself relentlessly.

  “His talent was not that he had great style,” McClure assesses. “He didn’t. It got better I think. We worked probably harder on that than we did on anything. He’d like to slump over, and we’d keep hollering at him. No, his talent was his control of his fatigue and his pain. His threshold was different than most of us, whether it was inborn or he developed it himself.”

  “What I like most about track,” Pre said at the time, “is the feeling I get inside after a good run.”

  To achieve their ambitious goals, Prefontaine and McClure had to battle the late Oregon spring, rival runners, and a high school dual-meet schedule offering few opportunities for all-out assaults on records.

  Following McClure’s orders in the early meets, Pre went hard only one race per meet, running a 4:11.1 mile and a 9:13.4 two-mile one week, and a 4:19.4 mile and 1:54.3 half-mile the next. But by the end of April, Pre was ready to tackle the most important of his goals, at the Corvallis Invitational: the national high school two-mile record of 8:48.4 held by Rick Riley.

  The plan was for the first mile to be in 4:24 and the second in 4:20.0. That would yield a time well under the record, and put Pre within 8:40 range at the state meet a month later. On the Monday before the Invitational, Steve had run four half-miles between 2:07 and 2:10, with a 110-yard jog in between each one. “It came out to be an 8:36 two-mile,” he said. “After that, I was ready.”

  It was a night meet, and a chilly one. Despite his outward confidence, Pre approached McClure before the race and said that his stomach had been upside down for three days. “I told him mine had been that way for five weeks,” McClure notes. “The last comment I made to him, and this was because he was so intense that he sometimes ran the first part too fast, was ‘if you’re wrong on pace, be slow.’ So he ran a 69 on the first quarter-mile.”

  “My first lap was slow,” Pre said, a month after his record, “but I knew I couldn’t make it up all in one lap. So I went to work on a 66-second pace per quarter-mile after the first mile. I thought I better go to work. I hit the last lap and I knew I had it, so I opened up a little. My last lap was 61.5, and my second mile felt better than my first. I think I should have started my kick sooner.” His time was 8:41.5, 6.9 seconds better than the old record.

  “After I heard my time, I wasn’t tired at all. I felt on top of the world.”

  With the first goal accomplished, the district and state meets were the next venues for fast races. But Marshfield was in the team race for the state title, and Steve willingly sacrificed record attempts in one event so that he could win both the mile and two-mile races. “We weren’t going to run his guts out,” McClure says of their strategy. But other runners had different ideas.

  Despite chilly weather, Steve broke the national high school record in the two-mile by 6.9 seconds in April of his senior year. THE WORLD

  A relaxed Pre won the state mile championship his senior year in 4:08.4, easily outdistancing Doug Crooks of North Eugene. RUSS PATE

  Doug Crooks of North Eugene pushed Steve to the tape in the district mile, a tenth of a second behind Steve’s 4:08.4. And Mark Hiefield of Milwaukie set a strong pace throughout the state two-mile before Pre opened up a small lead on the backstretch of the last lap and held it for a 9:03.0 win. Winning the mile and two-mile races at both meets was unprecedented in Oregon, and the sacrifice of further record attempts seemed a tolerable price to pay.

  All during that successful senior season, the flood of phone calls and letters recruiting Steve to this school or that increased as the time for making a decision drew near. Steve directed most of these to his coach, and McClure made short work of the latecomers. Also, in his heart, Walt wanted Pre to go to the University of Oregon, his alma mater. Steve was pretty sure he wanted to go there or to Oregon State, but he hadn’t heard anything from University of Oregon cross country and track coach Bill Bowerman. Bowerman was the legendary coach of a succession of world- and American-record holders, including Bill Dellinger and Dyrol Burleson, who, like Pre, grew up in small Oregon towns.

  “Then I got a handwritten note,” Pre said. “I could barely read it. It said if I came to Oregon, he’d make me into the best distance runner ever. That was all I needed to hear.”

  Bowerman doesn’t remember it quite that way. “I recruited Steve the same way I recruited everybody,” he says emphatically. “After all, the athlete makes himself, the coach doesn’t make the athlete.” But Bowerman had been following Pre’s career since he was a high school sophomore, and had agreed with McClure’s statement that “Here’s a little guy who’s pretty good.” He agreed so much that he wrote a letter to the community of Coos Bay after Steve chose the university, thanking them for their part in Steve’s success thus far.

  “I have every confidence,” he wrote, “that if he keeps his eye on the target, and his dedication, with his background and with the future, he will become the greatest runner in the world.”

  Pre and Oregon had chosen each other. And with a win in the mile at the Golden West Invitational, an all-star meet in Sacramento, California, featuring some of the country’s best high school athletes, Pre’s Marshfield career was over. Fittingly, he won in a personal best of 4:06.0.

  Almost immediately, he made the plunge into world-class competition.

  International Competitor

  The 1969 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Championships were to be held in Miami at the end of June, and the people of Coos Bay opened their pocketbooks to send their favorite son to run the three-mile. The AAU governed the sport of track and field at that time, and its annual national championships determined who would be selected to run for the United States in international competitions. All of America’s best distance runners would be there, including much older and stronger postcollegiate athletes.

  Pre was game. The three-mile distance was one, in McClure’s words, “we weren’t quite ready for,” but you wouldn’t have known it watching the race unfold on the hot synthetic surface of Miami-Dade South College.

  Former high school great Gerry Lindgren and Olympic veteran Tracy Smith quickly broke away from the pack and kept it a two-man struggle for first place. Back in the pack, Steve moved from seventh to fifth, then charged home on the last lap for fourth and a spot on the AAU team.

  Steve was drafted into early service when second-placer
Smith chose to run in the Military Championships in France instead of the U.S.-U.S.S.R.-Commonwealth meet in Los Angeles in mid-July. Jerry Uhrhammer of The Register-Guard in Eugene got hold of Steve in Coos Bay with the news. “Pre had just returned from his second workout of the morning when he answered the telephone, still breathless.

  ‘I haven’t heard anything (pant, pant) about it,’ he gasped. ‘All I know is that I’ve got an airline ticket for Hawaii (pant, pant).’”

  As part of the overall team preparation for the summer’s meets, the U.S. team and alternates (Pre was one) went over to Honolulu for some training and racing. Pre was looking forward to challenging the Russians when the AAU informed him just two days before the race that Smith had decided to run in the Los Angeles meet after all. Pre was not pleased. “So now I have to sit on the bench when I was really ready to run a good, or the best, race of my life,” he groused.

  Then, in yet another turnabout the day before the race, and after completing a hard workout, Steve was told by AAU officials that Smith had withdrawn because of illness. Thus began a deep-seated dissatisfaction with an organization he continually found to be autocratic, unresponsive, and out of touch.

  Pre got his first taste of international competition in a July 1969 meet against the Soviet Union in Los Angeles. He stayed with the front-runner for the first mile of the 5000 meters before fading to fifth. JEFF KROOT

  A chagrined Pre was teamed with Lindgren in the 5000 meters. He stuck closely to pacesetter Lindgren for the first mile of his first international race. The crowd of 15,000 cheered on the high school kid, but he gradually lost touch with the pack and faded to fifth and a creditable 14:40.0.

  Next, the 18-year-old from Coos Bay was on his way to Europe with the AAU team for three meets. While in Europe, he wrote a series of letters to Kenn Hess, then with the Coos Bay World newspaper. Pre was a prodigious letter writer, if at times somewhat unorthodox. “Steve spoke better than he wrote,” says a friend, “because he was always in too much of a hurry to punctuate his sentences or read over for errors. In fact, I’m surprised he had the patience to write at all.” One of Pre’s letters from West Germany tells of his progress during the summer.

  Augsburg, W.G., Aug. 2, 1969

  Well I didn’t get first but I didn’t get last either. Thats the way I should of run in Los Angeles, and in Miami. I knew I had it in me but I had to prove it to myself. Now I’m ready to run with anybody cause I know what I can take I’ll just have to polish up on my form which was not the best but not bad either. I was relaxed the whole race except for the last lap and I got stiff again and couldn’t go when Jerry and the other guy took off.

  Here is how the race went the first lap was about 62, then for the 800 meters it was 2:05.3, 1500 meters 3:58.0, for the mile 4:13 to 4:14 the 3000 meter mark was in 8:07.0 and the two mile mark was in 8:42 something, the three mile mark was about 13:20 maybe a little faster maybe a little slower and then I came home with a 13:52.8 my last lap was not to good no sprint left.

  Now we’re in Augsburg, what an old city the houses here are hundreds of years old, the people here are very friendly, we all went to a old fashion party last night they had the band and the dancers and the big lieter beer mugs, which are just huge. I had one and that was enough for me. They gave us two for present to take home.

  Well I best go I’ve got a meeting to make tell Walt hello for me.

  Yours Truly, Pre

  This first international tour had been instructive. He had finished third in the 5000 at the United States versus Europe meet, and his 13:52.8 time was faster than any ever run by the legend of the previous generation, Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia. Pre had found that he could hold his own against the world’s best. That fall, as he left Coos Bay for the college town of Eugene, Oregon, Steve felt ready to take on all comers.

  “He was self-confident, yes, sir,” McClure recalls of the Pre of 1969. “He wasn’t cocky, as a lot of people accused him of later. He had a lot of pride, but it was constructive. Evidently, he had problems with the press or something. If you ask dumb questions, you get dumb answers, I guess.

  “I was just a short period in that guy’s life, but he kept in contact with me no matter where he went. That’s not the nature of some guy who does everything on his own.”

  2

  The Rube

  Most freshmen enter college with only a vague idea of what they want to pursue as a vocation. Steve thought that he would like to major in something that would lead to a career in “insurance work or interior decorating.” That he eventually majored in Broadcast Communications shows the range of Pre’s interests. As an 18-year-old self-styled “hick” from Coos Bay, he was just brash enough to think that he could do anything he put his mind to, on the track or off.

  “He was just pretty naive as a freshman,” reflects Bill Dellinger, who took over as head cross country and track coach after the retirement of Bill Bowerman in 1973. “He was someone who didn’t know any better and went out and did whatever he said he was going to do. We nicknamed him ‘The Rube.’”

  There was no identity crisis shadowing the personality of Steve Prefontaine. Take the time he and a friend went into a Eugene sporting goods store and the clerk asked if they knew anything about the good runner from Coos Bay. Steve unabashedly said, “Hey, that’s me, and it’s pronounced ‘Pre-fon-taine.’”

  Another freshman entering at the same time was Mac Wilkins, who would go on to win the gold medal in the discus in the 1976 Olympic Games.

  “Pre lived right across the hall from me in the freshman dorm. Unfortunately, his room faced in on the dorm complex, so there weren’t a lot of people who could see his bedroom window. But he still managed to hang his USA sweats up there, with the ‘USA’ facing out. That first year in school, he had a 1956 light blue Chevy with the back end jacked up, mag wheels, and fur on the back under the window—that was his car!”

  There was a defensiveness underneath Pre’s show of self-confidence, however, which may explain some of his swagger. “When I first met him,” Mary Marckx, a close friend and confidante, remembers, “he had a great deal of difficulty around campus. Oregon was very anti-athlete at the time, just after the 1960s. Steve was kind of an arrogant person anyway, and when he first started college, I don’t think he related too well to people; he thought they were prejudging him. Plus, he used to get nasty letters and notes on his door, crank calls—he was really harassed a lot. He built up his own little defense for awhile. As time went on, he just kind of grew out of it.”

  Part of that defense was his Coos Bay toughness, in which he reveled. It came in handy in workouts, especially, where Pre challenged the best runners of a school known for its distance runners. Pat Tyson, who was to become Steve’s friend and roommate, recollects the feeling of team members toward the prodigy.

  “Some were kind of envious, you might say, yet at the same time thought it was neat having him there. But that’s the way it was at Oregon: You’re friends, but when you’re on the track, you’re there to beat somebody else out. Steve was kind of above that, though, because even as a freshman, he was at national caliber.”

  Or better. During the dual-meet season, Pre was unbeatable. As the season progressed, he challenged more aggressively than ever, beating Washington State’s Gerry Lindgren, his AAU teammate from the previous summer, in the Pac-8 Northern Division cross country meet at Oregon State, when Pre chose to wear spikes over the muddy terrain, and Gerry went with flats.

  Lindgren came back, and in the Pac-8 cross country meet at Stanford, he clung to Prefontaine through a brutal 4:23 first mile. Leaving the pack behind, the pair strove purposefully for five miles, giving the impression that a struggle for collegiate distance dominance was under way.

  “We took off together,” Lindgren says, “and we were never more than eight yards apart during the whole race. I’d try to shake him, and then he’d try to shake me. Neither of us could take command.”

  Then, during the sixth, and final, mile, the
y talked. Up the finish straight to the tape, the gut-wrenching drive of which they were both capable was missing. Lindgren was awarded the victory. Both scoffed at talk of an intentional tie. “I didn’t know I had it won until later,” Lindgren said.

  “It was that close,” Pre added. “I was going all out. We didn’t plan to tie.”

  Pre’s last defeat in a cross country race came at the 1969 NCAAs. He was able to top John Bednarski of the University of Texas at El Paso and Donal Walsh of Villanova, but Gerry Lindgren of Washington State was too strong. FRANCIE KRAKER GOODRIDGE

  The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) cross country championships were in New York City that year, and Prefontaine took the last defeat in a cross country race of his career. Lindgren, overcoming nagging injuries, and Mike Ryan, the defending champion from Air Force, finished ahead of Pre.

  “I was scared, really scared,” Lindgren said, “so I wanted to lead all the way.”

  Pre had what was to be a rarity for him: an off-day. “I don’t know what happened,” Pre shrugged. “I like a fast pace, but I just wasn’t right today.”

  Two prodigies discuss race strategies before the 1969 NCAA Cross Country Championships in New York City. Gerry Lindgren (right) made the 1964 Olympic team just out of high school. JEFF JOHNSON

  Ready for All Comers

  A brief, successful indoor track season merged into the wet spring of 1970. As was customary for many northern schools, Oregon’s track team traveled south to California and Texas in March and April for a series of dual and invitational meets. Pre’s success at these meets prepared him for his first three-mile ever in Eugene, a dual meet against Washington State.

  A head cold left him stopped up, and the rain and raw wind at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field in late April were not particularly inviting. But Pre ran a 4:17 first mile, far faster than the planned 4:30 pace. “My rhythm was going good,” he would say afterward, “and I thought, ‘I’m not slowing down to 9-minute pace now!’” He passed two miles in 8:45 and finished three miles in 13:12.8, seventh-fastest ever by an American and the fastest time by a U.S. runner in two years.