For the next month, Eugene-Springfield residents will be reminded of the upcoming U.S. Olympic Team Trials for track and field just about everywhere they look. They’ll see hundreds of banners lining the streets. Billboards. Newspaper ads. Near the Fifth Street Public Market, a large sign today displays the number “25” – the number of days until the 10-day event begins June 27 at Hayward Field.
But that just means Eugene 08 staff are doing their job.

“We’re still dressing up the community,” said Kari Westlund, a member of the Eugene 08 steering committee and president of the Conventions & Visitors Association of Lane County Oregon. “We just want to create a very festive and welcoming atmosphere.”
With less than a month to go before the trials begin, organizers are stepping up their efforts to create a buzz and publicize the event. By the time June 27 arrives, Westlund said planners will have about 650 banners along the streets of Eugene and Springfield, along with existing billboards and signs. Businesses can also put up posters made available by Eugene 08 to promote the Trials.
In recent weeks, banners have popped up on streets where they haven’t been before, including Main Street in Springfield and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Autzen Stadium. The idea, Westlund said, is to capture the Olympic Trials atmosphere outside the event – especially near Autzen Stadium, where many visitors will board shuttles to campus.
“We wanted people to feel like they’d arrived at the event when they park their cars and get onto that shuttle,” Westlund said.
Much of the hype recently has centered around the Eugene 08 Festival, a corresponding daily celebration that sets this summer’s Olympic Trials apart from past years, said Libby Tower, chair of Eugene 08’s marketing and media services committee.
The festival will be free and open to anyone with or without a ticket to the main track and field action. That will make the entire event more of a community gathering than simply a track and field meet, Tower said.
“You don’t have to be a track fan to enjoy the festival,” she said. “It’s just the place you want to be.”
Westlund said the festival also allows Eugene 08 organizers to showcase their financial partners and expand access to everyone. The festival, which will take place directly outside of Hayward Field, will include family activities, food and live broadcasts of the track and field action on jumbo screens.

“We made a promise to separate this event from other trials that have gone on, and we think the festival really nails that,” Westlund said.
Among the festival’s scheduled days is “The ’80s Team Day” on June 27 to honor the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team that qualified at Hayward Field, but was unable to compete because of a U.S. boycott of the Olympics held in the former Soviet Union that year. It will conclude with “Send-Off to Beijing Day,” which will recognize this year’s qualifiers.
But despite all the buzz surrounding the Olympic Trials, the event is far from the only thing going on in town at the time. The internationally known Oregon Bach Festival begins its 17-day schedule on the same day as the trials, and Eugene’s Art and the Vineyard art and wine festival takes place in Alton Baker Park during the final weekend of the Trials.
Even with the seemingly crowded schedule, Eugene 08 staff have made sure not to overshadow the other summer attractions. Banners for the Olympic Trials share space with the other two events, including alternating posts on Coburg Road over the Willamette River.
“From the very get-go, we’ve reached out to the Oregon Bach Festival and Art and the Vineyard just so everybody feels like we’re going together,” Tower said.
And the overlap will also bleed into the events themselves. This year’s Oregon Bach Festival includes a tribute to former Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman – himself a big supporter of the arts during his life, Tower said.
But for all the hype around the Olympic Trials, at least one University community member is taking a different approach to talking about the event. Folklore program director and English professor Daniel Wojcik has organized “Track Town Traditions and the Culture of Running,” a series of films and discussions on the subject that will continue through this weekend.

Wojcik said the series takes more of an academic approach to Eugene’s track and field culture, and offers a natural segue into this summer’s Trials.
“The people are very excited about the Trials coming here, and there’s lots of stuff that’s mentioned about the cultural heritage of running in Eugene,” he said. “It’s just something obvious that I think folklore should be interested in.”
Part of the goal is also to document that heritage directly from those who lived it, Wojcik said. The discussions are recorded, and usually loosely structured to prompt more natural conversation, he added.
The last two events in the series, happening this Thursday and Saturday, will feature a group of “Track Town legends” in former Oregon runners Roscoe Divine and Kenny Moore, among others, and a film screening and discussion about Oregon legend Steve Prefontaine.
“I think it diversifies the way we think about the running culture here in Eugene, and I think that’s important,” Wojcik said.
Going into the final few weeks leading up to the Olympic Trials, Westlund said the climate now is very hectic for her and other Eugene 08 staff and volunteers. But she hopes the end result is worth it.
“We’re pretty proud,” she said, “and just anxious for it to come to life.”
[email protected]