by Tom Jordan
When Alvarado could no longer hold the car up, he ran to get help. While he was gone, the Eugene police arrived, but by that time, Pre was dead.
After hearing Bill Alvarado’s story, the police tracked down the 20-year-old driver of the other MGB. He said that he had arrived on the scene after the accident, and upon seeing someone pinned underneath the overturned auto, panicked and sped off to get his father, a doctor. The driver said that he could tell the driver had been injured but not whether he was still alive. A week after the accident, the police reported that the driver had passed a lie-detector test, and the case was closed.
Later that Friday morning, a sample of Pre’s blood was taken by the mortician at the behest of the police, a procedure the Lane County medical examiner at the time, Dr. Ed Wilson, called “not standard.”
“The medical examiner is the one who does that,” Wilson said. “All I can say is that this was done in an unusual manner and I don’t remember ever having it happen that way before or since. I was very angry about it.”
The deviation in procedure is an important point to Prefontaine’s family and friends. Depending on how and from where the blood was taken, the test can be off by as much as 20 percent. No one disputes that Pre had been drinking beer that evening, or condones drinking and driving, but none of the guests at the party thought him to be too impaired to drive. “He was in the same condition I was in,” Shorter said. “We’d had three or four beers and he seemed fine. I trusted him to drive.”
The mortician’s sample recorded the level of alcohol in Pre’s blood at 0.16 percent, well above the Oregon legal limit of 0.10 percent. To some, it was a clear case of a single-car accident caused by driving while intoxicated. Perhaps Pre’s driving was affected enough that he simply misjudged the curve and his approach speed. Perhaps, as one policeman speculated, he was reaching for a cassette tape and took his eyes off the road. Perhaps he failed to make the turn for an altogether different reason.
The result is the same.
On Pre: Frank Shorter
[The AAU] was what we were discussing the night he died, sitting in the car. I think it was only natural for me to go on with the fight, and I felt a certain obligation to do it. That was one of the many reasons I did it, but it did have an influence. There’s a certain aspect of any athlete’s mentality, which is to not waste an effort. There was this feeling you didn’t want to waste or squander any effort Pre put forward. In other words, if you could do something to keep that momentum going, then you should do it.
[Pre’s death] is still a “shock” kind of feeling. For me, it was my first dose of reality involving death, where I could be with someone one moment, and the next moment they’re dead. It was the first time for me involving a friend. It had impact, and it still does. It’s one of those feelings that kind of never goes away.
Frank Shorter won the gold medal in the 1972 Olympic Marathon and the silver medal in the 1976 Olympic Marathon.
“The Magic Was Gone Forever”
The next day, a Friday, was quieter than usual, as the people of Eugene awoke to the mind-numbing news that Steve Prefontaine was dead. Many who read or listened to that mournful statement had watched Pre at the peak of his vitality 15 hours before, sweeping around the last bend of the Hayward Field track, heading for the finish tape. Now he was gone.
Parents groped vainly for a way to tell children who had run after Pre for autographs the day before that their idol was dead. It was difficult enough for adults to comprehend.
Soon the eulogies would come pouring in to newspapers, television stations, the University of Oregon athletic department, and the Prefontaine family. Plans were made for memorial services in Eugene and Coos Bay, with burial in his hometown. It was all so swift and final.
Friday night, a group of about a dozen of Pre’s friends gathered at Kenny Moore’s house. In the conversation that followed, the participants learned that few of them felt themselves to have been intimate friends of Pre’s, according to one who was there. The reason: “Nobody could keep up with him.”
The elemental fact was that Steve knew and was friends with a great many people of widely varying backgrounds and interests—from Coos Bay toughs to college professors. He was constantly surprising those who thought they knew him by the scope of his projects, most of them unpublicized. Many in attendance that night were startled to learn that Pre had started a running club at the state prison in Salem, Oregon, and had made regular visits there for several years to provide workout schedules and encouragement.
Pre would astonish those who thought of him as a jock with his knowledge of art, cars, photography, and carpentry. He was constantly on the go, visiting both track and nontrack friends all around Eugene.
“He never liked to be by himself,” says a friend who was closer than all but a few. “Scared to be by himself. I don’t know why I’m saying that, but I think it’s true. He didn’t like to be alone.”
In early June 1975, it was Pre’s People who felt alone. The grief was perhaps best expressed in a letter of condolence Oregon’s legendary governor at the time, Tom McCall, typed on the Sunday after the accident.
“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Prefontaine: Oregon has never been struck such a tragic blow. Pre was an essential part of the pride we all feel in Oregon. He was a magnificent performer and a human being of admirable independence. No one so young has ever made such an imprint on our state, the nation, and the world—at least no one from this part of the country. Nor will we see his like again in my lifetime. . . . These are just words and I could go on wringing my hands, but they are words that struggle to say to you how we all feel in this moment of deprivation. . . .”
Steve Prefontaine’s funeral was held in Pirate Stadium, inside the track he ran around so many times during his high school years. He was buried at a cemetery in Coos Bay, dressed in his Olympic uniform. His pallbearers, appropriately, were all runners, dressed in national team warm-up suits. At a memorial service the next evening at Hayward Field in Eugene, Kenny Moore gave the eulogy, and other athletes and friends put words to their emotions. As they spoke, the scoreboard clock continued to run, until it was stopped at 12:36.0, a time Pre once said he would be satisfied with in the three-mile. During the last minute, the crowd of 4,000 stood and cheered, and many present still maintain the sun broke through the clouds as the clock stopped, just as it had whenever Pre had stepped onto the track. Then it was over, and the people filed silently out of the stands. They had cheered for the last time for Pre at Hayward Field.
For Pre’s People, a unique and personal relationship died that night in the spring of 1975. “It’s hard for some people, even here in Eugene, to understand the bond between Pre and his fans,” one of Pre’s admirers wrote. “It was hard to understand, and hard to explain, unless you experienced it.”
Other great athletes have made Eugene their home in the intervening decades. Alberto Salazar, Rudy Chapa, Mary Slaney, Joaquim Cruz, and many others have raced at Hayward Field in front of the knowledgeable, supportive hometown fans.
But there will never be another Pre. Never be another athlete possessing the charisma, fearlessness, the warmth of Steve Prefontaine. Never another athlete with sufficient energy to start a jogging club, tutor teenagers, organize tours, or work for the parole of a prison inmate.
An old rival, whose high school two-mile record Pre broke, expressed the mood of a Eugene without Pre a year after his death. For those who saw Prefontaine run, it is a mood that lasts to this day.
“It seemed,” said Rick Riley, “that those of us running in the meet were only minor performers and that any minute the Star would appear and the crowds would roar to life, athlete and spectator giving and taking whatever it is that each needs and wants. I stood there on the track near the finish but he did not appear. The magic was gone forever.”
“When you are a young and up-and-coming runner in the U.S., and making some breakthroughs in distances, Pre is still the man that you are compared to. It’s always based on Pr
e.” —Bob Kennedy, former American-record holder at 3000 and 5000 meters, in a 1995 article by Curtis Anderson of The Register-Guard. GEOFF PARKS
12
Pre’s Legacy
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift.”
When Pre would speak as he often did to young athletes at clinics and camps, he would end his talk with this sentence. For him, the Gift was running, which had taken him from junior high benchwarmer to the cover of Sports Illustrated by the time he was 18. For him, the gift was not something handed to one, but something that had to be pursued with tenacity and diligence. Pre acknowledged that he was a good runner, could even become in time the best in the world, but he sincerely believed that many others had been born with more running talent than he; that everything achieved had been due to hard work and always giving his best. “It made him mad to see wasted talent,” a close friend remembers.
Pre could be incredibly eloquent at times, and quite profane at others. Much of both came out of his honesty. Leave it to Steve to talk to junior high school students without embarrassment about the dangers of venereal disease. Or while in high school to respond to a question about military plans for the future with “stay out as long as I can, don’t believe in the war.”
It was his honesty and don’t-mess-with-me attitude that inevitably brought him afoul of the Amateur Athletic Union. While proclaiming that he was “not really trying to get under anyone’s skin,” he proceeded to do just that. Other athletes had complained about the restrictions and sanctions placed upon them by the bureaucracy. Pre sank his teeth in and wouldn’t let go. His example in life and the profound shock of his death increased the resolve of many to carry on the fight.
In 1978, the U.S. Congress, after hearing testimony from Frank Shorter and athletes from other sports, passed the Amateur Sports Act, in effect breaking the stranglehold of the AAU and reorganizing a number of sports, including track and field. In 1981, the Association of Road Racing Athletes challenged the rules of international amateurism by offering prize money openly to the top finishers in the Cascade Run-Off in Portland, Oregon, Pre’s backyard. Slowly at first, and then with increasing velocity, “shamateurism,” with its under-the-table payments and hypocrisy, gave way to direct payments to athletes in both road running and track and field.
Just as Pre served as a catalyst for dramatic change in the organization of the sport, he helped give personality to the young company that grew into Nike. He was the first athlete to be paid to wear Nike shoes. He was the first person in the company to try to get top international athletes to wear the new brand. His method was to send a personal letter and some free shoes to his top rivals, asking them to give the shoes a try. Bill Rodgers and Mary Slaney, Olympic medalists John Walker, Rod Dixon, Brendan Foster, and Dick Quax all received shoes from Pre and ended up wearing Nikes at some point in their careers. Pre styled himself as “National Public Relations Manager,” but he was really Nike’s first sports marketing agent. “Basically, Steve showed us how to do it,” says Geoff Hollister, who took over for Pre after his death. “We look back and credit him with being the first sports marketing guy we had. Our world at the time was what was going on in Eugene. Steve, he’s talking to people all over the world, and that was a whole different attitude.”
Today, at the Nike corporate headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, there stands in the middle of the campus the Prefontaine Building, with a statue of Pre facing the foyer. With all of the hundreds of superstars from various sports who have been in the Nike fold, Pre is the only one to have been accorded such an honor.
On Pre: Steve Prefontaine
Some people create with words, or with music, or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, “I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.” It’s more than just a race, it’s style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.
There are other tributes to Pre’s memory. The annual Prefontaine Classic in Eugene has evolved into the best invitational track meet in the United States, and one of the best in the world. Sellout crowds and national television coverage have been hallmarks of recent editions of the meet. In September of each year, the Prefontaine Memorial 10-K is held in Coos Bay along a route Pre used to train over often. A monument listing his accomplishments stands in a prominent place along the waterfront promenade in his hometown. In Eugene, the wood-chip jogging trail in Alton Baker Park that Pre lobbied for unsuccessfully in his life was approved the day after his death; instead of the one-mile circuit envisioned by Pre and the Decathlon Club, however, five miles of trails were constructed and are used by runners every day of the year.
In the years after Pre’s death, his athletic contemporaries went on to further fame on the track and off. Pre’s college teammate Mac Wilkins won the Olympic discus gold medal in 1976 and set the world record that Pre had felt would be his one day. Lasse Viren of Finland repeated as the gold medalist in the 5000- and 10,000-meter races and finished fifth in the marathon in Montreal, again appearing nearly invincible after several years of mediocrity. Oregon head track coach Bill Bowerman continued his experimentation with shoe design and co-founded Nike, which grew into the largest sports-related corporation in the world. From 1973, Bill Dellinger remained as the head coach at Oregon for more than 20 years, guiding Alberto Salazar, Rudy Chapa, and dozens of other distance runners to national championships and Olympic team berths. Mary Slaney grew up to set extraordinary world and American records during a tumultuous career spanning three decades. Oregon teammate and rival Paul Geis made the final of the Olympic 5000 in Montreal but never reached the level expected of the “next Pre,” as he was unfairly tagged. Roommate and friend Pat Tyson became a high school coach in Spokane, Washington, and mentored his teams to a score of state championships in track and cross country. University of Oregon runners Dave Taylor and Geoff Hollister became senior executives at Nike in Beaverton, Oregon. Frank Shorter went on to win the silver medal in the marathon in Montreal, and became one of the icons of the running boom. Don Kardong finished fourth in the 1976 Olympic Marathon and, through his subsequent efforts as a road racing administrator, helped end the era of “shamateurism.” All were touched in an ongoing way by the life and death of Steve Prefontaine, as were Pre’s People.
Twenty years after he established a running club in the state penitentiary, the club still exists, with 125 members. Each year, they run a 5-K in Steve’s memory within the walls, but open to runners from the outside.
For the rest of Pre’s People, he is kept alive in memory. Some still make a pilgrimage to the scene of the crash, now called Pre’s Rock, to leave flowers or a running medal, or just to see the “5-30-75” on the rock wall, first painted there more nearly four decades ago, and faithfully renewed by unknown persons in the years since.
Others run on the trail named for him, or watch the international track meet held in his honor each year. All of them recognize that Pre’s legacy will endure as long as he is remembered, rounding that last turn at Hayward Field and heading for the finish line, eyes on the clock, ready to break the tape one more time.
DON CHADEZ
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that spark should burn out in a brilliant
blaze than it should be stilled by dry rot. I would
rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in
magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
—Jack London
Appendix
Outdoor Track Racing Career
1967
DATE MEET SITE EVENT TIME PLACE NOTES
3/25 Indian Club Relays Roseburg Mile 4:31.8 2nd
4/1 v Grants Pass Mile 4:32.0 1st
4/4 v Reedsport Reedsport 2M 9:42.1 1st
4/7
Spike Leslie Relays North Bend DMR* 4:32.1r 1st *Distance medley relay
4/15 v Roseburg 880 2:03.5 1st
4/15 v Roseburg Mile 4:48.9 1st tie
4/21 Mile 4:32.2 2nd
4/28 2M 9:46.2 1st
5/2 v Reedsport Coos Bay 880 2:09.5 3rd
5/5 County Coos Bay Mile 4:36.3 1st
5/11 SCJV Coos Bay Mile 4:29.1 1st
5/11 SCJV Coos Bay 880 2:06.3 1st
5/18 District Springfield 2M 9:52.3 4th
1968
DATE MEET SITE EVENT TIME PLACE NOTES
3/23 Indian Club Relays Roseburg Mile 4:13.8 1st
3/29 v Grants Pass Grants Pass 2M 9:13.9 1st
4/5 Spike Leslie Relays North Bend DMR 4:21.1r 1st
4/12 v Roseburg Roseburg 880 1:57.2 1st
4/12 v Roseburg Roseburg Mile 4:51.8 1st
4/19 v Springfield—N Eugene Coos Bay Mile 4:23.4 1st
4/26 Corvallis Invitational Corvallis 2M 9:01.3 1st state record
5/3 Coos County Coos Bay Mile 4:14.1 1st
5/10 v North Bend Coos Bay 880 1:56.2 1st
5/17 District Springfield 2M 9:13.2 1st
5/24 State Meet Corvallis 2M 9:02.7 1st
1969
DATE MEET SITE EVENT TIME PLACE NOTES
3/29 Indian Club Relays Roseburg DMR 4:12.6r 1st
3/29 Indian Club Relays Roseburg SpMR* 1:56.4r 1st *Sprint medley relay
4/5 v Grants Pass Coos Bay Mile 4:11.1 1st
4/5 v Grants Pass Coos Bay 880 1:54.3 1st
4/11 v Roseburg Coos Bay Mile 4:19.4 1st
4/11 v Roseburg Coos Bay MileR 51.5r 1st
4/18 v South Eugene Coos Bay Mile 4:21.1 1st
4/18 v South Eugene Coos Bay 880 1:57.7 1st
4/18 v South Eugene Coos Bay MileR 1st 52.6r
