A8
FRIDAY
July 15, 2022
Summer Sports
SeasideSignal.com
How living legends, tragedies – and championships – made Eugene the
‘TRACK CAPITAL OF THE WORLD’
By DOUGLAS PERRY
The Oregonian
Gov. Ben Olcott stepped
before the crowd on a blustery
November day in 1919.
“I dedicate this field as
Hayward Field,” he said, then
turned and tossed a football
to one of the players waiting
to start the venue’s inaugural
game.
Not much of a speech, but
it suited the utilitarian new
stadium.
In the years that followed,
Hayward Field would become
a sports citadel, but not of the
sport that launched it. The
University of Oregon’s foot-
ball team finally would move
out in 1966, leaving Hayward
as a rarity at the time: a ded-
icated college track-and-field
stadium.
By then, its unique power
had spread beyond its gates.
“Track Town, USA,” Eugene
soon would be called. And the
“Track Capital of the World.”
The appellations were
obvious ones to Oregonians,
natural ones, but outsiders
often questioned how this
state of affairs came to be.
Even Runner’s World
magazine found itself won-
dering in 2011 how the sport’s
“capital” ended up, not in a
high-profile metropolis, but
in “a small city with a small
airport, a sleepy, leafy univer-
sity town with a reputation for
hippies, timber and turf. New
York City is New York City.
What is Eugene doing right?”
The short answer: It played
the long game, culminating
this summer in it serving as
host city for the World Ath-
letics Championships, run-
ning July 15-24. Track Town,
USA’s foundations were put
in place with the University
of Oregon’s 1903 hiring of
Bill Hayward, a former pro-
fessional sprinter, as well
as an elite lacrosse player,
casual boxer and part-time
vaudevillian.
Hayward
had
been
ensconced as a coach at the
University of California, a
plumb position, when the lure
of Oregon fly-fishing brought
him north.
“I came for a vacation and
caught what they called the
Oregon spirit,” he said. “It’s
not serious, but it is conta-
gious, so they kept me here.”
Coach’s legacy
“Colonel Bill” coached a
clutch of record holders and
Olympians over his 44-year
tenure in Eugene, setting a
high standard for the track
program, even if, in that age
before television and the inter-
net, it remained little known
outside the Pacific Northwest.
He was such a larger-than-
life figure in the town that the
stadium was named after him
while he was still in the midst
of his coaching career.
But Eugene only became
the track capital of the coun-
try after one of Hayward’s
former athletes took over.
Steven Nehl/The Oregonian
The Oregonian
Heptathlete Kelly Blair-LaBounty won a national title while at UO and went on to compete in
the 1996 Olympics.
Steve Prefontaine, shown in 1973, remains an iconic figure in track.
a freshman, but the best pros-
pect in the world at two miles,
three miles and 5,000 meters,
and in Eugene, where track
is what football is in South
Bend, that makes him taller
than the tallest Douglas fir.”
This hardly was hyper-
bole. Pre and Hayward Field’s
crowds soon became one.
“There was a symbio-
sis,” recalled Moore, the for-
mer UO runner, Olympian
and author who died this year
at 78. “The crowd would
get louder and he would run
harder. The people would see
him running harder and get
louder. It would go back and
forth.”
Pre appeared destined for
Olympic greatness when a car
crash killed him in 1975. He
was 24.
Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
Runners compete at Hayward Field in 2008, before the venue was rebuilt.
When the 18-year-old Bill
Bowerman, the son of a for-
mer governor, arrived at UO
in September 1929, Eugene
was a town of some 18,000,
and it looked like “the cam-
pus had been recently logged
over,” Kenny Moore writes in
his 2006 biography, “Bower-
man and the Men of Oregon.”
Bowerman ran the 440
for Hayward at Hayward
Field and earned a busi-
ness degree. He was think-
ing about becoming a doc-
tor, but the Great Depression
continued to hold on. Medi-
cal school required money he
didn’t have.
After serving in the Army
during World War II, earning
a Silver Star and four Bronze
Stars, he returned to his alma
mater, this time as a coach.
Bowerman built what was,
by the early 1960s, the most
dominant college track pro-
gram in the country, even
though the school didn’t yet
offer full track scholarships.
His teams won three NCAA
titles in four years. Bowerman
had something more than tro-
phies. Tall, laconic, with a
penetrating gaze, the man had
presence. He was the Gary
Cooper of track.
He didn’t even recruit ath-
letes for his teams — he didn’t
believe in it.
“Everybody knows about
the University of Oregon,”
he said. “If some kid wants
to come here, all he has to do
is write a letter. If he doesn’t
want to write, he can’t be very
interested.”
Bowerman made UO a
track powerhouse, but he
was much more than a suc-
cessful coach. He pushed the
sport forward with innova-
tions in training and equip-
ment. (He co-founded Nike
with Phil Knight, his former
athlete.) And he helped pop-
ularize running as an activity
for everyone.
“In Eugene, babies are
teethed on stopwatches,” a
reporter wrote in 1970, “and
at most any hour from dawn
until well past dusk the streets
are jammed with joggers,
their wheezing in tune with
the rumble of passing log
trucks …”
“Jogger” was still a rel-
atively unfamiliar noun at
the time. Boxers in training
loped along roadways, but
not the average American.
Why would an accountant or
lawyer or insurance agent do
that?
The reason, for many of
those wheezing joggers, was
Bill Bowerman.
On a trip to remote, out-
doorsy New Zealand in 1962,
he discovered that some
locals went out running not to
train for competition, but as a
recreational activity. Stunned
— and then inspired — he
consulted with doctors who
specialized in cardiovascu-
lar health and then published
a book for the U.S. market:
“Jogging: A Physical Fitness
Program for All Ages.”
Eugene had something
else going for it as it began to
lay claim to the title of track
capital of the country. It was
the university town just up the
road from where a scrappy
kid named Steve Prefontaine
grew up.
UO had seen plenty of
great runners over the years:
Ralph Hill, Mack Robinson,
Bill Dellinger, Jim Bailey,
Dyrol Burleson, Jim Grelle,
Otis Davis. Prefontaine was
different. The Coos Bay
native had charisma. A rock
‘n’ roll attitude.
In 1970, Sports Illustrat-
ed’s editors put the 19-year-
old Prefontaine, in his green-
and-yellow UO kit, on the
magazine’s cover, heralding
him as “America’s Distance
Prodigy.”
“Ah, Prefontaine!” the
cover story exclaimed. “Only
OUTDOOR NOTE
Land conservancy hosts
BioBlitz at Cape Falcon
Marine Reserve
North Coast Land Conservancy’s
Marine Reserves Program is seeking
participants for its Land-to-Sea Com-
munity Science BioBlitz, running now
through July 17 in and around Cape
Falcon Marine Reserve.
A bioblitz is a communal effort to
identify and record as many distinct
species in a designated area in order
to collect long-term data sets. It’s also
a great opportunity to get outdoors
and learn more about the surrounding
marine environment in a fun, engag-
ing way.
Participating in the bioblitz at Cape
Falcon Marine Reserve is simple and
requires no defined commitment.
You can do it independently at your
convenience.
The first step is to download the
iNaturalist app onto your mobile
device and join our project in iNatural-
ist. Then, any time during the bioblitz,
head down to Short Sand Beach, Fal-
con Cove Beach and Neahkahnie
Beach (all along the marine reserve
site) to look for various species and
document your observations in the
app.
If you don’t know exactly what
something is, don’t worry! Just snap
a picture and add it to the project.
Researchers and other users from
around the world work to identify all
recorded species in iNaturalist.
In conjunction with the monthlong
project in iNaturalist, NCLC is hosting
an in-person “bioblitzing” excursion
from 8:30 to 10 a.m. Saturday, July 16,
at Neahkahnie Beach, adjacent to Cape
Falcon Marine Reserve. This activity
will be led by Marine Program Coor-
dinator Kristin Bayans, in partnership
with Oregon Coast Aquarium. It is free
and open to the public, but registration
required.
The participant who records the
most species during the monthlong
project will receive an excursion with
Garibaldi Charters valued at $300. To
sign up for the July 16 event or to learn
more about the Land-to-Sea Commu-
nity Science BioBlitz, visit NCLCtrust.
org/on-the-land or email Bayans at
kristinb@nclctrust.org.
‘The greatest track town’
Books would be writ-
ten about Steve Prefontaine,
movies and documentaries
made. But even before Pre
became a myth, everyone in
Eugene recognized the impact
he had on both his sport and
the city.
“The people in Eugene
love track because of Pre,”
former Villanova runner —
and Prefontaine rival — Dick
Buerkle said in 1978. “He
was a real entertainer. The
town has always been a great
track town, but he made it
even more.”
Many great Oregon ath-
letes have enjoyed, and rev-
eled in, the Hayward Field
symbiosis since Prefontaine’s
time. You don’t even have to
be a UO fan to be moved by it.
“I’d like to come up here
every year,” UCLA coach
Jim Bush said in 1977. “This
is the greatest track town in
America.”
After Prefontaine — and
after Bowerman, who died in
1999 at 88 — the University
of Oregon’s men and women
have continued to win NCAA
titles and set records.
And Hayward Field has
solidified its reputation as
“track’s Carnegie Hall,” as
former UO head coach Vin
Lananna put it. The stadium
hosted the U.S. Olympic Trials
throughout the 1970s — and
then started doing so again in
the 2000s. The NCAA Cham-
pionships became a fixture in
Eugene. Now the World Ath-
letics Championships arrives.
It’s not the same old Hay-
ward Field. It’s been rebuilt
for the 21st century, made big
enough to match its standing
in the track world. But it’s still
got that old aura.
Melanoma stands out.
Check your skin.
You could spot cancer.
LEARN MORE AT
STARTSEEINGMELANOMA.COM