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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 28, 1999)
Silver Prefontaine At 25,Pre Classic is at its best The Prefontaine Classic survived to become one of the world’s top meets By Scott Pesznecker Oregon Daily Emerald Oregonians from across the state will flock to Hayward Field on Sunday to see it. Across the country, countless others are expected to tune in to watch it. Athletes from all over the world will make the long trip to compete in it. But despite the spotlights and glory that surround the Pre fontaine Classic 25 years after its creation, the loyal fans of Track town, U.S.A., best understand it. Eugene track and field fans came to Hayward Field in 1973 to watch the first Hayward Restoration meet, an event made to help the Oregon Track Club raise money to build the west grandstand. And the fans got what they paid for. Stepping away from his usual longer distances to take on Dave Wottle in the mile, Steve Pre fontaine finished a close second with a blistering time of 3 minutes, 54.6 seconds. Wottle won with a time of 3:53.3. Two years later, on Friday, May 30,1975, Pre was driving alone in his MG sports car on Skyline Blvd. He was just below Hendricks Park when his vehicle crossed into the other lane, smashed into a rock wall and flipped over, pinning the distance runner beneath the metal frame. Just hours before his death, Pre ran the second-fastest 5,000-meter time in American history, second only to his record of 13:22.8. The loss of Prefontaine rever berated throughout the country, but his followers in Eugene were left especially shocked and mournful. As a tribute to Pre, the first Steve Prefontaine Classic was held upon the renaming of the Hayward Restoration meet eight days after his death. The resulting meet included a field worthy of Prefontaine him self. Seven world-record holders gathered in front of 8,500 fans to pay tribute to the deceased dis tance runner. Pre’s memory — and his all heart, no-quit attitude — has lived the Prefontaine Classic. “It’s the only annual sports event [in Eugene] that’s tele vised on a network,” said meet co ordinator Tom Jordan. “It has a huge impact on how peo ple perceive Eugene.” Several of the world’s top track and field athletes have been at tracted to this year’s 25th meet, de noted the “Silver Pre.” Among the top names are Michael Johnson, Marion Jones and Maurice Greene. And why wouldn’t such highly regarded athletes travel to Eugene to compete? This year’s Pre Clas sic is ranked No. 13 by the IAAF, the governing body of the sport. According to the IAAF, finding a better meet to compete in would require traveling to Europe. The mile at the Prefontaine Classic remains true to its roots, when Pre and Wottle dueled in the original meet. Sunday’s mile is promoted as the fastest annual mile ran in the world. This year should be no differ ent, as every entrant in the mile has cracked four-minute times. Among the pack is Adam Gouch er, who because a Eugene crowd favorite by running a sub-four minute mile at the Oregon Twi light on May 15. The meet is nationally televised on CBS, allowing those too far from Eugene to share in its glory. But the Prefontaine Classic was not always such a recognized event. In the years after Pre fontaine’s death, the Prefontaine was underfunded and the compe tition limited mostly to post-colle gians because it coincided with the NCAA Championships. The meet’s status continued to dwindle in the early 1980s. To at tract more famous European ath letes, the Oregon Track Club de cided to move the Pre Classic to late in the summer. Wanting an opportunity for col legians to compete before the NCAAs, local distance-runner Pat Holleran began organizing the “Hayward Classic,” a meet that was planned to take place in the Pre’s old time slot. Ultimately, the late-summer Pre Classic fell apart and was can celed, so Holleran took the oppor tunity to rename his meet as the Pre Classic. Holleran took the meet to heights not approached by the OTC. He secured a $7,000 com mitment from Nike, using much of it to attract high-profile athletes, and he cut some of the meet’s usu al events to make it more enter taining. The results were immediate. A crowd of 7,000 spectators — the most since the original Pre Classic the year of Pre’s death — showed up in late spring of 1981 to watch the elite field of competition at Hayward. “Without Nike, there probably would not be a Prefontaine Clas sic,” said Jordan, who became meet coordinator in 1984. The meet’s success climbed un til 1986, when a nation-wide dis interest in track and field caused attendance to plummet to 4,819 in 1991. Jordan was having a hard time drawing the same top-level athletes, who were competing in Europe for more money. However, newly appointed NickMedley/Ememld Eugene’s Mary Slaney won’t defend her Pre-Classic record of 4:21.25 in the mile. Nike director of athletics Steve Miller took interest in the Pre Clas sic and vowed to bring it back to the international scene. By 1995, he had done just that. On the 20th anniversary of Pre’s death, 13,665 fans watched the likes of Carl Lewis, Sergey Bubka, Johnson, Gail Devers, Maria Mu tola and Suzy Hamilton. The Pre Classic gained IAAF Grand Prix status in 1996, and now it has an annual budget of about $500,000. It’s budget in 1979 was about $6,000. “It was never in danger of fail ing, but there certainly was a point where it was struggling to sur vive,” Jordan said. “Now, it’s like being on the mountaintop and looking down. It’s never been as good as it is now.” It would have been hard for any body to predict that Steve Pre fontaine would grow to have such an impact on his sport when he was a boy growing up in small Coos Bay. And likewise, considering all the obstacles endured by the Pre Clas sic, nobody could have predicted the impact the Silver Pre would have on track and field today. Courtesy Photo Prefontaine used to affectionately call the numerous Eugene fans “his people.” Pre’s death shocks nation, Oregon This emotional memoir ran in theJune2,1975, edition of the Emerald By Dave Bushnell Oregon Daily Emerald The legendary feats of Steve Prefontaine will be no more, but the legend of the man lives on. Not only was the shock of Pre’s death early Friday in the hills of eastern Eugene felt in Oregon, but waves of disbelief carried through out the country and the world. While the Eugene community was sleeping, totally unaware of the fate which its most famous cit izen had met, the East Coast was awakening to the news of Pre’s death. A phone rang at the apartment of a University of Oregon student — it was a friend from Massachu setts calling to find out if the news was true. Another student re ceived an early morning call from a friend in New York, inquiring about the same subject. To those who have seen him run at some time during his ca reer, the news was unnerving. But to the 6,500 fans who were at Hayward Field Thursday evening for the NCAA Preparation meet, the news was like a shot to the ab domen —the whole body seemed to go numb. That warm spring evening, Pre pulled away from Frank Shorter —with two laps to go — and won the 5,000 meters in the second fastest time ever run by an Ameri can. The time was one-and-a-hali seconds behind his own Ameri can record. Prefontaine Classic Unfortu nately for the track and field world, it was his last race. All we have left are the memo ries of a gutsy kid who did n’t have the foggiest notion oi what the work “quit” meant. Paul Geis, who came to Oregon in order to compete against Pre called Steve “a legend. He was the greatest distance runner in Amer ica. His records will be broken but they will never again be held by the same person.” After his final victory lap Thursday, Pre stood at the south end of Hayward field, talking tc his parents and signing auto graphs for a throng of admiring kids. Four hours later, his life was terminated when his MGB failec to negotiate a curve on a winding road below Hendricks Park crashed into a rock embankment and flipped over, pinning Pre un der the car. The Twilight meet was the last performance he would give be fore the Eugene fans whom he af fectionately called “his people.” It was a love affair which might be unequaled in sports. This relationship between the Eugene track community and the baby-faced kid who became known as “Pre” started almost immediately upon Steve’s arrival from Coos Bay. In the early spring of 1970, Pre won both the mile and the two mile in a dual meet with UCLA in Eugene. Although the team’s ef forts came up short of the Bruins’ the fans were instantly taken by this new, gutsy distance runner. Two weeks later, back in Hay ward Field, Pre ran the fastest three-mile time by an American in two years —13:12.8. A month later Pre ran his first sub-four minute mile as he finished sec ond in a time of 3:57.4. As Pre began to move in on the American records, his following grew. The young, the old, men and women—they all were a part of “Pre’s People.” Later that summer Pre won the 1,500 meters in Moscow and fol Turn to PREFONTAINE, Page 6C
