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

  Then in a typical gesture, Pre asked his beaten opponent, George Young, to jog a victory lap with him. Later, as he signed autographs, Pre was asked how it felt to be number one? “Well, all I can say is I hope I can stay fit, and if I’m able to run like this in Munich, I’m going to be pretty hard to stop.”

  Pre suggested that Young stay in Eugene for a few weeks and “burn up the mountains” with him. With regret, Young had to decline.

  "Everybody was around him, but he wasn't aware of them. His eyes were totally open and not really smiling, but he had a kind of 'I did it' look, a kind of tight feeling around his mouth. And the eyes: like he was in a dream, or that he'd put himself through something and conquered it. He was in another world."—Pat Tyson, Pre’s roommate, commenting on Pre after his Trials 5000 victory. BOB KASPER

  Final Preparations

  With the Trials behind him—and a success—Pre continued his severe training. As always, Dellinger handled the workouts, while Bowerman acted as counselor and sounding board in the once-a-week bull sessions at the coach’s house up on the butte overlooking the McKenzie River.

  More than anything Pre wanted to be prepared for a race that would test everyone in the field to their maximum.

  “I could lose and live with the knowledge that I’d given 120 percent, given it all, if I’d been beaten by a guy who came up with 130 percent,” Pre said in early 1972. “But to lose because I’d let it go to the last lap . . . I’d always wonder whether I might have broken away. . . .”

  Dellinger, himself a medal winner in the 1964 Olympic 5000, knew what was needed and fed it to Pre. One workout was four 1320s and 3 x 1-mile with the times decreasing on each repetition. In his own Olympic preparation eight years before, Dellinger had done the 1320s in 3:15, 3:13, 3:11, and 3:09. The workout became a challenge to Pre, and it didn’t take him long to “gobble it up,” in Dellinger’s apt phrase. Before Munich, Pre ran 3:12, 3:09, 3:06, and 3:00, then came back with the cut-down miles.

  For sharpening, Dellinger had him run a solo mile under 4:00. Just walk to the line, get set, then click off a mile in 3:59, with no competition and no psyche except the impetus of the Olympic 5000-meter, when 21-year-old Steve would be going against the “veterans.”

  He was very aware of his relative youth and of the trend he was trying to buck. “There are big odds against me,” he conceded. “Nobody under 25 has ever won the Olympic five. But if everything goes right, whoever wins will know he has been in one helluva race.”

  In order to sharpen the Olympic athletes’ training, the United States Olympic Committee set up a mandatory training camp in July. At the training camp in Maine, Pre continued to prepare. “If anything, I may be putting in too much mileage,” he allowed.

  He left for Oslo, Norway, and a series of tune-up meets for the Games. One was a 1500-meter, in which Pre ran a fine 3:39.4, getting second to eventual 1500-meter Olympic champion Pekka Vasala’s 3:38.3.

  “I didn’t mind getting second,” he wrote to a friend. “He’s the best in the world.”

  The second day of the two-day meet, Pre came back with an American 3000-meter record of 7:44.2, demolishing Jim Beatty’s mark by 10 seconds. “I could have broken the world record if I hadn’t run the 1500 the night before,” Steve said.

  Before the terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, Steve hung out with other athletes in the Olympic Village. Here is he is with Madeline Manning, the 1968 Olympic gold medalist at 800 meters. RICH CLARKSON

  His running was going well, but the pressure was definitely being felt. “I can hardly wait to get back,” Pre wrote to Pat Tyson on one of the dozens of postcards he sent weekly to all and sundry. “I can’t wait for this damn running to be over with. Pre.” And again on August 1, the day before the 1500-meter in Oslo: “I’ll sure be glad when all of this is over with.”

  To add to the tension, he hurt his foot slightly while training and had to watch from the sidelines two weeks after his 3000-meter race as Lasse Viren of Finland went past 3000 meters in 7:43.6 on his way to an 8:14.0 two-mile world record. Pre felt frustrated, saying that he would have broken that world record, too, if he had been able to run in the race.

  The Viren mark provided incentive. His foot better, Pre set an American record of 8:19.4 in a two-mile race in Munich just before the Opening Ceremonies. It was a dark, windy evening at the Post track on the outskirts of Munich. The race was actually a 3000-meter, but Bowerman and Dellinger measured out the extra distance and when Pre passed the finish line of the 3000 he just kept going, dodging perplexed officials, who wondered, no doubt, what this crazy American runner was up to.

  Going for the Gold

  Pre looked ready. Now came the waiting period before the heats of the 5000-meter, the days spent wandering around Munich or the Olympic Village, trying to keep the tension bearable and the homesickness under control.

  Dan Berger was covering for the Associated Press at the time:

  “I was having a cup of coffee in the press room set up by Adidas in the Olympic Village when Pre walked in and sat down a few seats away. He looked tired. He smiled and returned my hello, said he felt fine, and so forth. Nothing major.

  “I was about to slide over and interview him when a European journalist plopped down into the seat I had planned to use and introduced himself to Steve. He began to ask a series of questions all relating to the running tactics which would be used in the 5000 final. Pre knew he would be in for a tough race, he said. (And I began to realize that his comments were being said softly, not brashly as I had imagined he would act.) He talked of what kind of a pace he felt it would be. He said he felt he’d have to push the pace midway in the race, because if it turned into a kicker’s race, he’d be in trouble. He said he had a lot of respect for Viren and the others.

  “I didn’t take any notes, but I was impressed with the way Steve handled the interview like a professional. Not arrogant. Not bragging. Just matter-of-factly setting down his feelings.”

  Pre’s plans for the race were shattered by the terrorist attack upon Israeli athletes within the Olympic Village by elements of what was then termed an Arab terrorist group. Several Israelis died in the initial assault. The remaining hostages were killed a day later during a bungled rescue attempt by the West German authorities. A total of 12 athletes and coaches lost their lives.

  Knowing Steve would be upset, Dellinger went to the Village, vaulted a fence, and brought him out. They went to Austria, an hour away, and spent the day up in the mountains. Pre took a run and tried to forget. When they returned to Munich, Bill had him move into his apartment rather than return to the Village.

  Though still shaken, Pre looked good in the qualifying heats, running a fast 13:32.6 behind Emiel Puttemans of Belgium. But beneath his surface calm, he was extremely upset, first by the tragedy itself, which stole all of the glamour of the Games for him, and also by the change in the time schedule caused by the memorial service for the slain athletes.

  “Pre felt that the extra day of rest was going to be really advantageous to those who had run the 10,000,” Dellinger explains. “Which it was, of course. I tried to counsel him that you can’t let these type of things bother you.”

  The day of the final was muggy, with the sun heating the track beneath the transluscent canopy that covered one-third of the stadium. An expectant sell-out crowd of over 80,000 waited for the start. A group of spectators who could not get tickets clustered on the berm created from World War II rubble 300 yards from the stadium. The 13 finalists approached the line, perhaps the strongest field of 5000-meter runners in Olympic history: Lasse Viren, who had set a world record in winning the 10,000-meter gold earlier in the Games, and Juha Vaatainen of Finland; Dave Bedford and Ian Stewart of Great Britain; Mohamed Gamoudi of Tunisia; Pre’s old nemesis, Harald Norpoth of West Germany. And Steve Prefontaine.

  Then, after all the anticipation, the pace for the final was painfully slow, even slower than the first 5000 of the 10,000-meter race. They passed
two miles at a trot, in 8:56.4. This was not the race Pre had said he would run. He had wanted a race where it came down to “who’s toughest,” and this was a kicker’s race. But there was no way Pre was going to let that continue.

  With four laps to go, he chopped the 67-second pace with a lap in 62.5, then one in 61.2. He dropped many in the 13-man field with the 2:03.7 over two laps, but Lasse Viren was still there, as was Gamoudi, and Puttemans. Viren, in fact, put himself slightly in the lead, keeping the initiative, showing great poise for one who, at 23, was the youngest man in the field next to Pre.

  The third lap of the buildup ended in 60.3, and at the bell, it looked like a three-man race among Pre, Gamoudi, and Viren, with Ian Stewart of Great Britain too far back for gold.

  Steve began his drive in the 1972 Olympic 5000 final as they approached the bell for the last lap. Twice he tried to pass Finland’s Lasse Viren, and twice he was cut off by Mohamed Gamoudi of Tunisia (904). DON CHADEZ

  Viren still led slightly, with Pre behind him and Gamoudi off Pre’s right shoulder. At the top of the backstretch, with 300 meters left, Pre started to pull out to pass Viren, but Gamoudi, one of those cagey vets Pre was so aware of, moved instantly to cut him off before he could get past Viren.

  Chastened, Pre dropped behind Viren again until the top of the last curve, when he tried to go again. And again, Gamoudi moved at the perfect moment to cut him off.

  Exhausted by his attempts for the gold, Pre staggered to a fourth-place finish behind Great Britain’s Ian Stewart. “Give Prefontaine his due,” Stewart said of the race. “The way I ran, I didn’t deserve an Olympic medal.” DON CHADEZ

  His momentum gone, Pre gathered one more time for the final straight, but when he tried to call up strength from deep within himself, there was no response. Totally spent, he staggered the last dozen meters and was passed by Stewart, running for a bronze medal. Viren won the gold in 13:26.4, with Gamoudi taking the silver.

  The defeat was devastating. Pre sought solitude in the bowels of the Olympic Stadium, where Blaine Newnham of The Register-Guard from Eugene found him. Years later, the sportswriter recalls the scene:

  “I said it was a nice race, I know you feel bad, but we’ve got to talk.

  “He said, ‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ and he started off. All of a sudden, it was like there was an explosion in my head, and I said, ‘Wait a minute, you’ve got to talk to me. What about all those people back in Eugene, the people at Hayward Field, Pre’s People? They’ve lived this race with you, they can understand what happened, and we’ve got to talk.’

  “I said, ‘How old are you?’ He said 21 or 22, I don’t really remember what he was [21]. ‘And so you finished fourth in the world, how bad is that?’

  “He said, ‘Well, that’s not too bad.’

  “I said, ‘Did you run for third or second? No, you ran to win, you took the lead with a mile to go, you ran your butt off, and you finished fourth, now how bad is that?’

  “‘No, it wasn’t that bad.’

  “What he needed was someone to put his arm around him, to kind of hug him and say, it’s okay, we understand. Pre’s People understand. And so, goodness, he started up talking and 20 minutes later he was all pumped up again. And I remember Great Britain’s David Bedford walking by, and he shouted at Bedford, ‘I’ll see you in Montreal and I’ll kick your butt!’”

  It was a strong trait in Pre. He didn’t like to lose—hated it—and if he did, his first reaction was to make an excuse.

  “The pace wasn’t fast enough,” he told Bert Nelson of Track & Field News. “If it had been 8:40 for the first two miles, I would have had gold or silver. It would have put crap in their legs. It was set up for Gamoudi and Viren.” Infuriated that Gamoudi had cut him off not once, but twice, Pre vowed, “From now on, I’m going to be a dirty son of a bitch. I’m going to foul a lot of people. I’ll probably get thrown out of a few races, but it’s time we Americans learned to run like the Europeans.”

  Disillusioned as he was by his Munich experience, Pre could still see the lessons beyond his anger. “He didn’t lose too many,” Bowerman states, “but when he would, hell, he’d bounce back. He was just so fiercely competitive; and he could evaluate them. He’d go out there and run the best race he could and then, if he got whipped, why, there was another day; he learned from it. I don’t think he ever thought he knew it all, anytime.

  “He recognized that he was a kid running among men and the longer-distance races are men’s races. I don’t know of any distance performer who is not better at 25 than he was when aged between 18 and 22. He recognized his time was ahead of him.”

  A disheartened Pre was encouraged by the support he received when he returned to the States after two post-Olympic meets in Rome and London. “If anything will keep me running,” he said, “it’s the fantastic response. Complete strangers write wishing me well. The local people are so great. I would have to move away from Oregon. I couldn’t retire here.”

  And even outside of Eugene, there was little gloating. Bob Payne of the Spokane Spokesman-Review in Washington described the sentiment most succinctly several years afterward.

  “He didn’t bring home a medal, but he helped create in that 5000 final one of the greatest, most wildly exciting distance races in history—forcing it through that incredible, four-minute, final mile, taking the lead with two laps to go, perhaps knowing already that he didn’t have the late speed or the experience to hold all of ’em off. Viren, then Gamoudi, then Stewart, all got him, faster perhaps, wiser surely at the time. But none any gutsier.

  “There was no grim satisfaction that the cocky little braggart had gotten his. He’d made the race, put himself on the line, never flagged. Given it everything. He always did.”

  On Pre: Alberto Salazar

  As other kids who were aspiring baseball players might hear of Babe Ruth, that’s how I would hear about Pre. His front-running example reinforced in my mind that that was the way you showed what you were made of—lead from the front, not just wait in the back.

  He wouldn’t take second effort—it wasn’t acceptable. It was all out. When you’re like that, when you start doing that, you become a lot more consistent. And that’s what you saw with Pre. The guy never had races out the back end. I think it comes down to pride in the end. Not proud, necessarily, that you’re better than everybody else, but that you are tougher than anybody else. That if you lose, you are going to make whomever you are running against pay. And that’s what Pre did.

  At a very young age, he was competitive with the best in the world. He certainly wasn’t scared of running against whomever. Like at the Olympics, you see the kind of person he was. You look at the way he ran it, he really went for it and tried to win the whole darn thing. There’s no doubt in my mind he could have gotten third if he had sat back and timed his kick just right. But he didn’t want third place. He wanted to give it everything to see if he could win the gold.

  I think in 1976 in Montreal, he would have given Viren a fight like hell. I mean, it would have been unbelievable.

  Alberto Salazar is the former American-record holder in the 5000 and 10,000 meters and marathon.

  5

  Years of Thrilling Madness

  Quickly, Steve settled back into the routine of the college student: attended classes, did his workouts, watched Love, American Style on TV, forgot to vote. Still, Pre returned from Munich a changed man.

  Despite the support and good wishes of his community, he felt a depression resulting from his Olympic experience that was not to leave him fully for the next year-and-a-half. The disappointment was beyond ready assimilation.

  True to a promise he had made to himself before Munich, Steve skipped the 1972 cross country season. He continued to live with Pat Tyson in the trailer, along with Lobo, a perhaps German Shepherd pup that Pre rescued on its way to the pound.

  “All the next year, he taught Lobo and made him into a very disciplined dog,” Tyson says. “Lobo was really his buddy.” />
  Gradually, as the Oregon winter rains closed in on Pre and Lobo, doing workouts around the streets of Eugene and Springfield, the pain eased.

  The Unbeatable Senior

  The indoor track season of 1973 opened with Pre continuing his winning ways, although some competitors noticed that Steve now showed the ability to relate to them before he beat them into the track as well as after. “The defeat in Munich seemed to have sharpened his human side,” Don Kardong observes, “to emphasize the qualities of warmth that he had hidden behind a veil of invincibility.”

  At the Los Angeles Times Indoor meet, he took on the milers at their own distance and beat them. “I didn’t feel great with a half-mile to go,” Pre said after his upset win in 3:59.2. “Then I heard the crowd come to life and I thought, ‘Hell, they’re right on my butt ready to pass me,’ so I just dug down and ran as fast as I could.”

  Steve ran the last quarter-mile on the 160-yard track in 57.6, and beat, among others, Marty Liquori, a renowned miler who would one day hold the American record for 5000 meters. “I seem to be getting more speed the older I get,” Pre enthused, outwardly as upbeat as ever.

  In that race, as in many others, Prefontaine appeared to derive a direct energy from the crowds he performed before. It was a phenomenon that Liquori thinks might ultimately have hurt Pre by the time the important European races rolled around.

  Pre seemed to derive energy from the crowd’s enthusiasm as he upset milers Marty Liquori and Henryk Szordikowski in the Los Angeles Times Indoor mile in February 1973. DONALD DUKE

  “Because so many times he would come to these indoor races and just kill the fields and win by a half a lap or so. I think the biggest thing in Pre’s mind was to please the fans. He would respond to the crowd and pick up the pace before it should have been picked up, doing things that take a lot of mental and physical energy. I think it took a lot out of him. . . .”