Just when you thought the Prefontaine Classic couldn’t get any better, it did.
Loaded with three world record holders, the 2000 Pre Classic was one of the biggest track and field meets on American soil. This year’s Classic looks to be even bigger with world record holder Hicham El Guerrouj entered in the Bill Bowerman Mile.
The world record holder in the mile, 1,500- and 2000-meters, will compete on American soil for only the second time ever, May 27 at Hayward Field. His race in the U.S. came in 1996 at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
The Morocco native owns a personal best of 3 minutes, 43.1 seconds in the mile and a 3:26.0 in the 1,500-meters. The Hayward Field and Prefontaine Classic meet record in the mile is 3:50.9, set by Kenya’s Daniel Komen in 1998.
His only losses in the past five years were in Atlanta, when he fell at the bell lap of the mile in Atlanta to finish a disappointing 12th, and in Sydney last summer, where he was edged by Kenyan Noah Ngeny in the mile.
El Guerrouj will remain in Ifrane, Morocco, a high-altitude training facility in the Atlas Mountains, until late May, when he will come to Eugene. The mile will be his first outdoor competition of the season.
El Guerrouj is the first entrant into the 2001 marquee meet. World record holders Maurice Greene, Michael Johnson and Marion Jones are perennial Classic participants.