A History of American Sports in 100 Objects by Cait Murphy

Author:Cait Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465097753
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2016-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

1975

PRE’S ROCK

In his too-brief career, Steve Prefontaine did the impossible: he made distance running cool to Americans. At the time of his death in 1975, the James Dean of track held every US record from 2,000 meters to 10,000 meters.1

There could be a whiff of ghoulishness about Pre’s Rock, where he died in a fatal car crash at age 24, but somehow there isn’t. His parents were known to visit it, and his friends still do.2 The sincerity of the visitors who leave totems of their own hard-earned achievements—spikes, ribbons, trophies, socks—can hardly be questioned. Oregon prison inmates carved the granite marker in remembrance of Pre, who organized a running club for them.3

Prefontaine came to national attention as a freshman at the University of Oregon, when he made the cover of Sports Illustrated as “America’s Distance Prodigy.” His collegiate career was a litany of triumphs. He won the National Collegiate Athletic Association three-mile four times4 and also won three cross-country championships. He never lost a college race at any distance over a mile.

But there was more to Pre than his achievements. He had a star quality that no other distance runner in the United State has ever had. Sure, he typically ran from the front, which is high risk and exciting. Yes, his competitiveness was all but tangible. And when he grew that mustache, he added several degrees of sex appeal. What really mattered is that he had a special connection with the fans—they called themselves “Pre’s people”—at Oregon’s Hayward Field. “The minute Pre hit the field for his jog, there was an undercurrent of enthusiasm in the crowd,” recalled former Oregon runner Geoff Hollister. “You could feel the electricity.”5

Pre’s most famous race was one he lost—the 5,000 meters at the 1972 Munich Olympics, run a few days after the terrorist murders of Israeli athletes (see 1972 entry on David Berger). An English commentator noted that Pre was “almost a cult in the United States, sort of an athletic Beatle.” But his US record was six seconds slower than the world mark, and the field in the Munich final was strong. He was also two years younger than anyone else and had not competed much internationally. In the final, that inexperience showed.

After an almost embarrassingly slow first 3,400 meters, the last mile was as dramatic as a race can be, and Pre was in the thick of it. Three times in the last 600 meters, he tried to take the lead. Three times, he could not keep it, with Finland’s Lasse Viren and Tunisia’s Mohamed Gammoudi seeing him off with veteran aplomb. Entirely spent by his efforts, Pre couldn’t hang on for the bronze and finished fourth.6 The judgment, then and later, was that he had had lost a medal not because he wasn’t fast enough, but because he had gone for the gold. That decision—to go all out for victory—cost him a place on the podium. But it was pure Pre.

Devastated, it took some time for Pre to recover his drive.

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