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