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Prefontaine was Amazing

Bold text Steve Roland Prefontaine was born on January 25 1951 in the town of Coos Bay Oregon. There are no records on his life before high school. But as a freshman at Marshfield High School, Prefontaine at the beginning found some success in cross country running. With help from the Marshfield cross country coach, Walt McClure, he placed 53rd in the state meet. Prefontaine ran a personal best time of 5:01 in the mile his freshman year. Driven to improve, Prefontaine undertook a high-mileage training plan during the summer. The plan was ultimately successful, and the following year he placed 6th in the year-end state meet. He continued brutal training, at the end of the cross country season in preparation for track. His training was too aggressive and the overworked Prefontaine failed to qualify for the state meet. However, his junior and senior years proved very successful, with Pre winning every meet, including states, and setting a national high school record his senior year in the two mile race with a time of 8:41.5 breaking the Rick Riley record in 1966 of 8:48.8. Overall, Prefontaine broke 19 National High School records in track. Following high school, Prefontaine enrolled at the University of Oregon to continue his running career under Coach Bill Bowerman, who would later co-found the Blue Ribbon Sports, the precursor to the Nike shoe company. He joined the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity as an undergraduate. After his freshman year, in which he finished 3rd in the NCAA National Cross Country meet, he suffered only two more defeats in college (both in the mile), winning three Division 1 NCAA Cross Country championships and four straight three-mile titles in Track and Field. "Pre" was then the best known athlete in Eugene Oregon, becoming a hero to all who watched his races. He was known for going out hard and not relinquishing the lead, a tactic that his fans and fellow competitors admired. The loud chants of "Pre! Pre! Pre!" became popular at Hayward Field. Many fans wore shirts saying "LEGEND", which became a sort-of war cry for him. Other fans of his began wearing shirts proclaiming to "Stop Pre" at his meets. Prefontaine gained national attention, and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated at the age of 19. He set the American record in the 5000 meter race, which took him to the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. Pre barely missed a medal there. He was passed with 150m remaining in the race by eventual winner Lasse Viren and silver medalist Mohamed Gammoudi and lost his bronze medal to hard charging Britain Ian Stewart in the last 15 meters of the race after having led nearly the entire last mile in a toe-to-toe battle with Viren. Returning for his senior year at the University of Oregon, Prefontaine ended his collage career with only three defeats in Eugene, all in the mile. It was during his collage career that he began to fight the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) which demanded that athletes who wished to remain "amateur" for the Olympics not be paid for appearances in track meets, even though they drew large crowds that generated millions of dollars. Also, the AAU took away amateur status if athletes were orthodox in any way. Because Prefontaine was accepting free clothes and footwear from Nike, he was subjected to the AAU's ruling. Bowerman, who also fought the AAU's restrictions, began calling Prefontaine "Rube" because of his naivety and stubbornness.

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