(This piece is for my book
titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I
am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from May 1995.)
PRE THE PERFORMER. Distance runners tend toward undemonstrative
introspection – a shy wave to accept cheers, a self-effacing comment to
reporters.
Steve Prefontaine wasn’t
typical, which is why he would be remembered so well for so long after his last
race. Prefontaine was a performer.
There would
be faster runners, but none so skilled at exciting crowds. A performer needs a
stage and a crowd the way an artist needs paint and canvas, and Prefontaine had
the ideal place and people in Eugene. Nowhere in this country is our sport as
major as here.
Janet Newman Heinonen’s
early career as a Eugene-based writer paralleled Prefontaine’s as a runner. She
knew him better than other writers and could penetrate his brash shield. One of
her articles about him started this way:
“The image-makers have
been hard at work on Steve Prefontaine, as they are on all athletes needing
simplifying and classifying. The picture they paint of Steve is one of a cocky
kid running around with a large chip on his shoulder, daring anyone to knock it
off.”
This interview showed a
quieter and more thoughtful Prefontaine. He talked of himself as a stage
performer:
“I think I have rapport
with the people here in Eugene because being out there by myself I’m an actor
in my own way. If I make a good performance and the people appreciate it, I
appreciate their support.
“It’s a two-way thing. If
someone likes a painting on the wall, they smile. If someone likes what I did,
they’re going to smile or clap or respond.”
The Eugene crowds
responded to him with near-mania, but the people there also knew him as a
fallible individual. “I like to talk with people and have them accept me as
Steve Prefontaine, the human being who lives in Eugene, Oregon – as compared to
Pre the athlete, the person who runs.”
On May 29th,
1975, the Eugene crowd came to watch him perform again. He was 24 years old,
still not peaked as a runner. He brought out the best in the crowd, and they
from him, by coming close to his American record for 5000 meters.
The next morning, his
people and the rest of us woke up to the news that he was gone. We may never
see another runner like him.
UPDATE. Steve Prefontaine became bigger in death than he’d
ever been in life. He was featured in a biography (Tom Jordan’s Pre!), three films (“Fire on the Track,”
“Without Limits” and “Prefontaine”) and many a Nike ad.
A tiny city park, called
“Pre’s Rock,” marks the spot where he died. But to me the two memorials that
honor this runner best are the annual Prefontaine Classic track meet, which draws
the world’s top athletes, and Pre’s Trail, which he had conceived and was built
and named after is death.
The meet draws sellout
crowds each year. The trail gets heavy use each day.
[Many
books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in
print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Miles to Go. Other
titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long
Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now
Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book
about me, Slow Joe.]
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