The 3-year-old adjusted until he was comfortable in the starting blocks, placing his left foot before his right. As he shot out of the blocks and entered the straightaway, his long blonde hair flapped through the wind. A smile crept across his face as he gazed into the crowd.
The image of Austin Sherman winning his inaugural all-comers meet at Hayward Field in June 2002 replicated that of his great uncle, former Oregon track star Steve Prefontaine, said Sherman’s grandmother and Prefontaine’s older stepsister, Neta Prefontaine.
After collecting a ribbon for his victory, Sherman ran to his grandma.
“Out of the blue, he said, ‘Can I show this to Uncle Steve?’” Neta said. “He was so proud, then he wanted to go run some more.”
Neta, who has overcome the deaths of two of the closest people in her life – her father, Ray, and Steve, also known as Pre – lives in Eugene and is reminded of Pre everyday. Whether it is a University student wearing a “Stop Pre” T-shirt or a random person across the country, strangers recognize the name Prefontaine.
“It always amazed me that after all of these years, they still remember what he did,” Neta said. “I can walk into a store, they go, ‘Oh, are you related to Steve Prefontaine, the runner?’ And it’s a wonderful positive response. … Everywhere I go you hear ‘Prefontaine.’ It can be kids talking about track or older people talking about it. It’s awesome because his spirit lives today. It lives all over the world.”
Pre, one of the greatest athletes to grace Oregon’s green and yellow, passed away in a tragic car accident in the streets of Eugene nearly 31 years ago. His death, at the age of 24, along with his undeniably gritty performance on the track, sparked instant fame and established a legacy that lives at the core of Eugene – also known as Track Town, U.S.A., in large part because Pre’s success.
“He got offers from all over the United States. … All he wanted to do was run for the University of Oregon,” Neta said of Pre’s recruiting process.
Neta said all the fuss was over someone she deemed a common man. Pre wasn’t the arrogant, cocky jock some people might imagine after watching one of the two major movies produced about his life, Neta said. She described his sense of humor, his unselfishness and his willingness to associate with everyone regardless of social class. She said it was those characteristics that made Pre a superstar.
“My brother was probably the most average,” Neta said. “He was a common man.”
A common man with undeniable talent, according to former teammate Pat Tyson.
“He had it back when he was a young kid at Oregon,” Tyson said. “The media caught on right away. When you are 19 and you’re on the front cover of Sports Illustrated in a sport that, even at that time, it wasn’t football or baseball or basketball. … For it to capture outside of Eugene and be on the most prestigious athletic magazine in America, maybe the world, Sports Illustrated, at 19 years old with an Oregon jersey on and all that stuff. … Whatever that is, it’s just the way he raced, the way how you watch something and say, ‘Whoa, that’s larger than life.’”
Tyson was also his roommate. Although they didn’t room together during Pre’s freshman year, that’s whe Tyson noticed the differences between Pre and everyone else.
“You kind of hope everyone else sees what you see,” Tyson said. “Whatever that is that makes people say, ‘Man, that guy is fun to watch and I want to hang around with that guy. I want to see that guy. That guy fires me up.’ Whatever that is, Pre had it, and he had it at a young age. And everybody realized that this guy was special.”
Many fans have tried to emulate Pre and many young track stars have been compared to Pre, but none have come close to touching the continuous success that Eugene witnessed in the early 1970s.
“It’s where he grew up, it’s family dynamics, it’s many things,” said younger sister Linda Prefontaine, who played collegiate tennis at Oregon. “I think people are always looking for that one thing that they can duplicate and have the same results, and that’s never going to happen. There isn’t ever going to be another Steve.”
Final call
The chants of “Go Pre” emanating from the stands of Hayward Field – where Pre never lost a race longer than one mile – continue to send goosebumps down Neta’s arms. It was the final time those cheers reached the distance runner’s ears – just hours before his death – that his big sister wasn’t a part of, something she regrets.
“That was the only race that I didn’t get to go to,” Neta said. “I always felt bad because maybe there was something I could have done for him.”
The date was May 29, 1975. Pre rounded the final turn with a painful look and crossed the tape first. Little did anyone realize the date would be historic, not because Pre continued his incredible success at Hayward, but because his death would occur in the early hours the following morning.
Prefontaine died in what was called a one-car accident. As he was driving down Skyline Boulevard and approached Birch Lane, where there is a sharp curve, Prefontaine drove over the curb and ran into a wall of natural rock. His car flipped over and pinned him underneath, crushing his chest and eventually sucking the air out of his lungs. One doctor told Neta those lungs had the biggest capacity he had ever seen.
There were skid marks for approximately 40 feet before the wall. Moments after the accident another car came upon the scene, and the driver apparently panicked and drove home to get his father. No one from that family returned, and by the time police arrived, Pre had no pulse, Linda said.
The Prefontaine family investigated the accident, and Neta believes there was another car involved, information a private investigator supported, but no charges were filed.
“We’ll never know what actually happened that night,” Neta said.
Neta’s family visits the site of the accident once a year and is grateful for the flowers, notes and gifts that track fans routinely leave.
“I’m sure he’s looking down saying, ‘Thank you,’” Neta said.
Pre ran for his fans and his family. A prime example is Neta’s son, Mike. On Mike’s ninth birthday, May 9, 1975, Pre raced in Coos Bay as part of the Finnish tour. Just before entering the track, Pre walked up to his nephew and looked him straight in the face.
“He said, “Mike, I’m gonna set a record tonight. For you, because it is your birthday,’” Neta said. “My son was very impressed with that. My son started running at about that age. It just made an impression on my son.”
Pre set the record that day in the 2,000 meters, with a time of 5 minutes, 1.4 seconds.
At the time of his death, Pre held every U.S. record from the 2,000 meters to the 10,000 meters. Pre was also the first athlete to win four consecutive NCAA titles in the same event (three miles/5,000 meters).
“I believe he ran faster than he is capable of doing; he went beyond the zone. That was his weapon. That was his secret,” Tyson said. “If you look at raw speed around the track for 400 meters, there are so many more people that would have more speed than he did, but they didn’t have the guts that he did. He had guts and he had this belief within him that he could do it. That was his weapon.”
Reading into the future
Pre’s future can only be imagined, but there was an injury that many fans and coaches were unaware of that would have drastically changed Pre’s time on the track.
According to Neta, Pre suffered from sciatic nerve problems in his right leg, which she believes would have led to a surgery and a long rehabilitation process that would have kept him out of spikes.
“He told me, ‘I hurt so bad, but I have to do this for these people,’” Neta said.
Pre ran approximately 100 miles per week, and overdevelopment of the chest and back led to the leg problems, Neta said.
“Pounding, pounding, pounding,” she said. “They don’t know what stress he
was under.”
Even those closest to him didn’t know the severity of the injuries.
“All I was aware of was he was training heavily,” Tyson said. “I know that he had spent a couple months earlier up in Colorado training. He had come down and ran a couple of races. His last race happened to be the fastest time in the world. He never ever shared that confession with me.”
The stress wasn’t only physical. Pre was devastated with his fourth-place finish in the 5,000 at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
“He didn’t sit back, waiting for someone else. He was a young kid racing against veterans and men who were older than he was and had the experience,” said Linda, who was unable to attend the Olympics but watched from Eugene. “He went for it all, and I think the person who ended up medaling third said he shouldn’t even have gotten a medal. Steve should have because Steve ran a better race, but that’s not the way that works.”
Neta, who also watched from Eugene, said she felt an overwhelming sense of sadness after the race was over.
“I cried when he lost,” she said. “I felt sad because they built him up so much to win it, and they knew he wasn’t going to win it.
“He thought he was going to win.”
The media and fan circus that surrounded Pre when he prepared and left for the Olympics wasn’t there when he returned. That, combined with what Pre deemed a loss, caused him to fall into depression, Neta said.
“I can’t tell you how much that hurt my brother,” Neta said. “He couldn’t quite hold his head up when he got back.”
Tyson said he never had a conversation about that race with Pre.
“As his roommate, we never talked about it,” Tyson said. “He came home early from Munich. I knew one of the reasons he liked me was because I never brought up those types of things.
“He never talked about his performance to anyone that I know of. He never felt sorry for himself. We didn’t go there because I know that he didn’t want to go there.”
Once Pre returned, he got a dog and named him Lobo, according to Tyson.
Eventually, Pre returned to the track, and talk about his chances for gold at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 rejuvenated him, but what Pre considered a lack of financial support from the Amateur Athletic Union turned him bitter toward it.
Because amateur athletes couldn’t accept money, Pre lived off food stamps and $500 for being a shoe representative for Nike after graduating from Oregon, Neta said.
“He told me, ‘If they don’t do better for me than they have, I’m not going. I don’t know if I want to go through that again. Living on food stamps doesn’t give you much pride,’” Neta said. “He loved his sport; he gave it everything he had.”
Pre challenged the AAU over the right for amateur athletes to compete in professional events. He even organized a meet without the permission of the AAU.
“Somebody needed to step up to the plate, and he was willing to do it,” Linda said. “I suppose that he recognized his importance in the big picture. He was the only one willing to take the lead in that situation and he did. I guess that’s one of those things he felt was one of the roles in his life was to make changes, and that was a big one. And because of him things did change, and that’s part of his legacy. Maybe why he was put here.”
Not only was Pre one of the biggest track stars during that era, but he also loved a challenge and when he believed in something, he fought for it, Neta said.
“Pre was born with a gift of being able to be aggressive and be forceful,” Tyson said. “He was just one competitive guy. He loved to compete, and he had a mouth. And he shot that mouth out, but he backed it up; he walked the talk.”
Despite what he felt was mistreatment, Tyson said Pre wouldn’t have skipped the 1976 Olympics.
“There’s no doubt in my mind he would have went,” Tyson said. “I think he was on a bit of a mission. He would have been there, he would have been in the final, and I can’t tell you how well he would have done.”
Pre had the opportunity to turn professional, but that would have eliminated him from competing in the Olympics.
In a letter to Neta, Pre said he was offered $200,000 to turn pro, she said. On one hand, it was hard for him to turn down because he was ready to settle down and get married, and living in a run-down trailer in Springfield on food stamps wasn’t ideal. But on the flip side, Pre felt the sport was more important than himself, Neta said.
“He said, ‘No, if I go professional, it will kill track,’” she said. “That was one goal of his: To get the gold for his people.”
Tyson, Neta and Linda all said he would have been on track for the gold medal in the final laps.
“He would have been very difficult to beat,” Linda said. “Had he continued to run the way he was, I’m sure he would have had every chance to have won the gold medal at that time. But it didn’t happen. What-ifs don’t matter at this point.”
Pre remains a fixture of track in Eugene, but he has a slightly different meaning to his big sister.
“He was like my own son,” Neta said. “Now, I consider him one of my guardian angels.”