by Tom Jordan
Good friend Mark Feig set off at an ambitious pace and led through the first kilometer, where Pre took over. He pressed through a fast 3000 in 8:03.2, with Knut Kvalheim shadowing him, looking far better than he had in the Restoration meet where he’d finished fourth.
“By the end of June, Knut had done some excellent workouts,” Oregon teammate Lars Kaupang notes, “like 2 x 1500 in 3:45 with four minutes rest. So Knut knew he was ready.”
At the bell lap, Pre still led, but on the backstretch with 300 meters to go, Kvalheim sprinted. Pre tried to respond, to gather as he had against Shorter 18 days before, but Kvalheim was too strong. Thirty meters from the tape, Prefontaine dropped his arms in defeat and coasted across the line, in a personal best and American record of 13:21.9, but 1.4 seconds behind Kvalheim. Pre had run the fastest 5000 he would ever run and had finished second over his distance to a teammate who had never before beaten him.
“I was tired,” Pre said later. “I wasn’t competitive. We were neck and neck with 50 yards left, but suddenly I thought, ‘Oh hell, I don’t want this bad enough. I don’t care. Take it.’”
Of that race, Geis remembers Kvalheim’s joy at finally beating Prefontaine. “He said, ‘I’ve waited four years for this moment!’ I think he had.”
Pre then traveled to Italy, for an international meet in Milan—and again lost while running better than any American had before. His 7:42.6 in the 3000 lost out to New Zealander Rod Dixon’s 7:41.0. Skipping the big Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway, Pre retreated to Finland to take stock. Mentally, he was not in Europe to lose, and defeat was difficult to handle. Sure, he liked to party and have a good time, but this trip, his main goal was to win.
“I think as soon as he lost once, he had problems getting back,” Kaupang suggests. “He started to think he was out of shape or that he was injured. He was so used to running by himself and breaking everybody else in Eugene. Then he would be over in Europe and realize that with a lap to go, there were maybe five or six guys on his heels. That’s kind of tough on a runner’s mind when you’re so used to being able to break everybody.”
Pre trained hard in Finland. He cut down on his beer consumption and got 10 hours of sleep a night. He tried to rest his sore back as much as possible. Nevertheless, as Ralph Mann remembers, there was time for a little fun.
“There was nothing else to do where we were staying in the northern part of Finland but take saunas and eat the local food. So Pre, Dave Wottle, and I got together, and the mayor of this little town printed up some posters, and we had a track meet—the three of us against the whole town. It was quite an event.”
After two weeks of training, Pre met Dixon again in a two-mile at the July Games in Stockholm, at that time an annual event in Sweden. When Pre stepped out on the track, he was given a particularly warm reception. The Scandinavian crowds liked his fearless front-running, and it was not unusual for the spectators to take up the chant of “Pre! Pre!,” much as they would have for a Lasse Viren or national hero Anders Garderud.
“They loved his style,” states Feig, who traveled with Pre on the 1974 tour, “the guy who will lead and force the pace. They dug it.”
This was truly a fast field, with Dixon, Emiel Puttemans of Belgium, Jos Hermens of the Netherlands, Dick Buerkle, Geis, Marty Liquori, and Suleiman Nyambui of Tanzania in the race. Buerkle finished fifth in a personal best of 8:24.2, but what he remembers is that the crowd expected Pre to set the pace.
“And he went out and did it—played into people’s hands. It was kind of like a challenge: ‘I’m going to run as hard as I can and beat everybody.’ They knew if he was in the race, it was going to be a good race and an exciting race. Anytime Pre ran, it was going to be a fast time. He did not run just to win.”
Prefontaine set out to grind his opponents into the track. Many of them did drop, but with a lap to go, a pack was still with him, and he was helpless to stop Dixon and Puttemans from sprinting on by.
“It was so weird,” Feig remarks, “because I’ve seen him run a three-mile or two-mile and he’d kick the last lap in like 58 seconds. And he ran the last lap in 58 in that thing, but they ran 55. Mowed him down in the last 110.
“And when they passed him, he just quit. He’d led the whole thing until the last 100 yards, but once they got by him, he was through. He was so pissed, he went out and got pissed.”
Pre was a well-beaten third, in 8:18.4 to Dixon’s 8:14.4. Once again, he had run faster than any American ever had, and had forced his opponents to run their best: Dixon set a New Zealand record.
Pre was still short of his primary goal, however—to win. At age 23, he was gaining strength and getting faster, as his American records at every distance from 3000 to 10,000 showed, but the fantastic Eugene winning streak couldn’t be continued once he went against the cream of the world’s distance runners. Those who saw him in both the United States and Europe have varying opinions why.
“Prefontaine was tough every time he went out,” Liquori states unequivocally. “The only drawback he had as a runner was that his last 100 yards wasn’t in the same class as a Viren or Great Britain’s Brendan Foster. I think that was the only thing that held him back in the 5000. I think he would have had more potential in the 10,000 because his tactic of running away from people would have worked better.”
In a way, Paul Geis says, Pre’s nature wouldn’t let him run a race like most of the Europeans did it: hang with the leader, conserve energy, and kick like mad over the last lap. “He was so hyper, he’d start getting scared in a race. So he’d take the pace and really push it. He wouldn’t sit back and wait. He wasn’t a gambler in that respect. He wouldn’t take that kind of risk.”
But both Geis and Lars Kaupang think Pre would have performed even better than he did if American track had the same schedule as the European season with its late-summer peak.
“I just think that he always had a pretty tough season over in the United States,” says Kaupang. “He had super races all of the time and was racing nearly every weekend. Then he went over to Europe and most Europeans were just getting started in their season, and just as they were reaching their prime in July and August, Pre was getting tired. Often he was leading the races and he just didn’t have it at the end.”
“If you could put his level of fitness in April or May against the Europeans in July,” Geis says, “I think it would have been a different race.”
An Uncharacteristic Finish
By the second-toughest standard—the clock—Pre’s month in Europe was a smashing success. He had set three American records and had been a factor in every race he ran. Yet, by that toughest of all standards—his own—Prefontaine’s Summer of Europe was unsatisfactory. He returned to Eugene for six weeks of intense training to prepare for a return to Europe for a short September tour.
Once again, in private moments with close friends, he would reveal that surprising doubt in his own abilities, such a contrast to the boastful Prefontaine known to the public. Perhaps to compensate for this self-doubt, he trained ferociously and put himself in “awesome shape,” in Bill Dellinger’s words. “Maybe the best shape he’d ever been in.”
To round into fast 5000 shape, Steve always liked to run a fast mile—blow out the tubes and work on leg speed. On a Tuesday in early September, he lined up some Oregon Track Club teammates to help pace him through a sub-4:00 mile. It was unpublicized, but this was Eugene, and a thousand people showed up to watch. This Tuesday was also a “field burning day” on which grass seed farmers in the Willamette Valley were allowed to burn the ground cover left after harvesting. An alert was broadcast, warning people with respiratory problems to stay indoors. It was not a day to run an all-out mile. But then there were those thousand fans, waiting expectantly.
Pre ran 3:58.3, and coughed blood afterward. He shrugged it off and addressed the crowd, thanking them for their support.
In September 1974, Pre thanked 1,000 fans who watched him run a 3:58.3 “tune up” mile in preparation for his return
to Europe. Smoke from farmers burning ground cover caused him to cough blood after the race. ERIK HILL
Shortly after, Pre left for Finland and within a week was racing in Helsinki in a 5000 against Lasse Viren. It was cold and rainy, but Steve summoned a drive on the last lap and led into the homestretch. Then, in a strategic failing that plagued him throughout his career, Pre eased off, and Viren and Garderud went by. Yet his time of 13:27.4 was pleasing, and he would have been satisfied with it except for the pain in his stomach whenever he took a deep breath.
Three nights later, Pre was in London for a two-mile race against Brendan Foster in the invitational Coca-Cola meet. Foster was becoming famous for surging a 60-second quarter in the middle of his distance races, and he was riding a hot streak. On the other hand, if there was anyone in the world who could handle such a tactic, one would think it would be Steve Prefontaine.
For five laps, Pre was there. Then Foster moved and Steve couldn’t accelerate. He lost contact, and had trouble breathing. With two laps left, Pre stepped off of the track. It was the only race of his life he did not finish.
Doctors diagnosed torn muscle fibers under his rib cage, a direct result of running that mile in the smoke-filled air of Eugene. “I’ll never run a race in conditions like that again,” Pre vowed. “My health is more important than satisfying the people who came out. I think they would have understood if I hadn’t run, but my sentiments toward them are very strong and I didn’t want to let them down. I let myself down instead.”
So ended Pre’s European odyssey.
Reflections on Europe
The season had been a mixed success and raised as many questions as it answered. In a candid talk with Jon Hendershott of Track & Field News, Pre gave his own views of his summer’s experiences.
“I’ve lost a lot of things this year, like consistency in training, eating, sleeping, and coaching, things I’ve always had previously. I’ve been very busy and so I’ve had to make do with what I could get. I haven’t been serious in two years about running. After Munich, I’ve just been going through the motions.
“I think running down Frank Shorter in the three at Eugene gave me a false impression of how ready I was. I wasn’t that ready, but I still felt fantastic. When he passed me, I was in a daze and it wasn’t until about 280 left that I thought, ‘Sheeit, if I don’t get going, I’m gonna lose!’ The next thing I remember is starting to lift with about 180 to go and catching Frank within 15 yards—and he wasn’t slowing down either. But now I know it was strength that enabled me to do that.
“Actually, I was very pleased overall with my trips. I know if I had a little more preparation, I would have done much better. I was as ready as I could be under the circumstances. I wasn’t ready to run those fast times, so I should have run the 10,000. But I thought I could run a good 5000 and I wanted to meet the best guys at their distance.
“To some extent, what the critics have said is true [about running better in Eugene], but everybody’s tougher at home. At Eugene I’m the toughest I’ll ever be, but it’s an adjustment in Europe. It’s true, I’m not as tough over there. I want to bring some top Europeans to Eugene and then we all could see how tough I could be.
“How tough in fact is Steve Prefontaine? When he’s ready, very tough. When he’s not ready, not very. Well, tougher than average anytime. It’s just a matter of priorities, how tough you want to be. The toughness comes from my training and with the proper training I’m very tough, at home or away from home. My toughness is in my ability, when I want to win, to go out and do it. But right now I’m evaluating how much I want it.
“Actually, I ultimately would like to retire and be able to say I accomplished the things I wanted. I really don’t know what those things are yet; maybe when I’ve achieved them, I’ll know. I might wake up some day and say, ‘That’s enough, I’ve done what I wanted to do.’ Planning and setting goals puts a lot of pressure on you, so I’d just as soon not plan right now.
“I don’t know if Montreal is worth it. That’s a decision I’m going to have to make in the next month or two. I don’t know if I want to make the personal sacrifices. There’s a monetary sacrifice, too. I’m tired of being a poor man.
“I was very pleased with the race,” he said of his 10,000 American record in April 1974. “I think if I’m still running in future years, that will be my direction. Sure I’ve thought about moving up, but I don’t want to run many of ’em. It’s a good race but it’s so damn long. I still haven’t accustomed myself mentally to running 25 laps. Even though my 5000 times haven’t come down drastically in the last few years, I still think I’m capable of running fast in it. I think I could have run 13:15 this year; that 13:27 in the cold at Helsinki is probably worth 10 seconds faster. I was really ready but didn’t get the breaks. That’s life and track though; you work hard for just a few chances.”
Ralph Mann tells a story about how he used to kid Pre that he would take one more beating in the 5000 at Montreal and then win the 10,000 at Moscow in 1980. “He’d get extremely upset with me. Not with the fact that I’d said that he’d lose at Montreal, but with the fact that he’d have to go to the 10,000 and have to go to Russia to do it, and have to wait four more years.”
10
The Last Season
The beginning of 1975 was still a sorting out period for Pre. The tough decision about turning pro or going for another Olympics was largely behind him. He was reconciled for the moment to at least two more years of relative poverty. At 24, he looked for an even stronger European season than in 1974, before gearing up for the Montreal Olympics.
In January 1975, Pre accepted an invitation to come to the Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas to undergo a series of tests in what was then the nascent field of elite sports physiology. A veritable who’s who of U.S. distance running came to be poked, prodded, and analyzed. Frank Shorter was there. So were Don Kardong and Kenny Moore. And Paul Geis and Jeff Galloway, an Olympic marathoner, and others. Some of the athletes viewed the various tests as a competition. Pre very definitely did.
First, he surprised the researchers on the psychological test by stating that his goal in a race was not necessarily to win but “to see who has the most guts.” He then set out to prove that in the physiological testing.
Of all the procedures to measure running efficiency, lactate levels, and other indicators, none was approached with more aggression by Steve than the test for maximal oxygen capacity, “the VO2 max test.” This indicator measures the greatest volume of oxygen that can be dispatched to the muscles during exercise and was considered by some researchers to be the most promising method of identifying athletes with the potential to be the best in the world. A score in the high 70s would place the runner among the world’s elite; a score in the low 80s had only been achieved at the time by a few Olympic cross country skiers and other elite endurance competitors. Everyone wanted to do well, but none more than Pre.
“When he was on that treadmill with the mask over his mouth, fire came into his eyes,” Doug Brown remembers. “He knew how long everybody had gone on the treadmill, and he was just determined to go longer than anybody else. He wasn’t even aware that anybody else was in the room.” Pre’s score of 84-plus had only been bettered by one or two athletes in the world.
“That test was more a test of will, more than anything,” says Frank Shorter, who was discovered to be the most efficient runner on record during the three-day study. “I think Steve was smart enough to realize that it put him in the 99th percentile, with a whole bunch of other people. You still have to be better prepared than the people who are in the same percentile as you.”
Ups and Downs
Pre returned from Dallas and went straight into the indoor season. His strength seemed greater than ever. At the CYO meet, he took second in the mile behind Marty Liquori in 3:58.6, accomplished with no speedwork whatever. But he was having trouble with a persistent sinus condition, and occasional twinges of his past sciatic problem. Pre was far f
rom confident in February as he came to the Los Angeles Times Indoor meet to run a mile against world-record holder Filbert Bayi of Tanzania and John Walker of New Zealand.
The morning of the race, he went for his usual two to four miles at six-minute pace and returned complaining of a lack of zip. It would be an interesting race, he said, his first indoor one against Bayi, and his first against a front-runner of equal reputation with himself. One thing was certain—neither he nor Bayi would hang back to wait for the kick.
The tension was evident as the introductions were made. Pre looked grim. At the gun, he fought for and got the lead, passing the first quarter in 61.6 and the half in a slow 2:02.3. Something was wrong; Pre lacked his usual mid-race drive. Bayi went by, and though Pre made one more rush at the leaders with two laps left, it was obvious that he had come to the end of his run. Walker and the others passed by him, and Pre finished fifth and last in 4:03.4, his worst indoor placing since high school.
Knowing he was not in top form, Pre looked suitably grim as he lined up with Rod Dixon (hands in air), John Walker, and Filbert Bayi (far right) for the Los Angeles Times mile in February 1975. Pre finished fifth, his worst indoor placing since high school. DON CHADEZ
Afterward, Pre tried to be philosophical about the loss—he hadn’t felt well and he hadn’t done the speedwork. But he felt chagrined about his showing, especially as sportswriter John Hall had predicted he would finish ahead of Bayi in the race.
“A few days later,” Hall wrote, “a letter arrived, postmarked in Eugene, with Prefontaine’s bold scrawl in red ink on the envelope and his name in the top left corner. How nice, I figured, he’s writing to say thanks for the column or maybe to explain what happened in the race. So I tore it open to get the good words. Out tumbled a clipping of my fumbling forecast with this note attached:
