You're tops: Steve Prefontaine

Ok, I'm buzzing a little at the moment. Partly because I've just come home from church, but also because I just had a freak encounter with a guy at Riverview called Ben Fields.

But I'll back up the bus a little before I get there.

I run. I'm a runner. I love running. I began when I was about 13 and since that time, barring ugly injuries (of which there have been a few) I've run pretty much constantly for the last 25 years. Sometimes up to 140-150km a week, these days a more sedentary 40-50km a week. Long distance running's my bag and as you go along, you grab a few heroes along the way.

Locally, I can't go past Herb Elliott (no relation), John Landy, Ron Clarke, Rob De Castella and Steve Monaghetti.

Beyond these shores though, I've got five big heroes: Sebastian Coe, Said Aouita, Haile Gebrselassie, Emil Zatopek and Steve Prefontaine. Each of these runners were renowned as much for the way in which they ran as for their accomplishments. I'm only going to talk of two of them for now...

Emil Zatopek, a Hungarian, won the 5000m and 10000m at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki and then decided he'd give the marathon a shot. He'd never run one before so at the 20km mark, when he could stand it no longer, he asked Jim Peters (England) who had been the pre-race favourite whether the pace was 'a bit slow'. When Peters looked at Zatopek as though he had been smoking something strange to be asking such an insane question, he made his own arrangements. He won a third gold medal in the Helsinki Olympics, cleaning up the all the long distance races in process. And he did it looking ugly. That's one reason why people loved him. He ran with a contorted, almost demented head tilt as though ever sinew was stretched and he was about to burst something. But he dominated. Actually he crushed other runners; grinding them into a pulp with withering bursts that were powered by pioneering interval session that are emulated to this day.

Steve Prefontaine never won an Olympic medal. He did run in the 1972 Munich Olympics but finished fourth in a race that he wished he could erase from his memory. At one point, Steve held practically every American distance record from 1500m to 10,000m (that's 1500m, 1mile, 2000m, 2-mile, 3-mile, 5000m and 10000m if you're wondering). The guy was a freak. He reckoned that anyone who sat on the shoulder of another runner to let them do the work before running to victory was a whimp. Steve's philosophy was that every time you get to a start line, you pull out you're very best (he held the same thinking on many of his training runs too!). You run hard. Not surprisingly, Steve was a front-runner. As much as his coaches tried to convince him otherwise, he always led from the front and basically said to everyone else: 'catch me if you can'. If you're good enough, you'll beat me...but you'll have to catch me first. Steve said: 'A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more'. He ran to see who had the most guts.

The crowds loved Pre. They wore 'Go Pre' T-shirts, they chanted 'Go Pre' in the concluding stages of most of his races (which was usually a chant to victory). Adding to the folklore, Steve's coach at the University of Oregon, Bill Bowerman, used Steve as a guinea pig for some running shoes he concocted using his wife's jaffle iron. We now now those shoes as Nike... Steve was part of the genesis of all that.

Steve died tragically in a car accident on the evening of May 30, 1975. He'd run in a meet that afternoon and was perhaps a little ticked off. He'd had a few to drink. But what probably killed him was an insatiable love for speed. On foot and behind the wheel.

Steve once said, 'To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift'. He believed that if you're given an extraordinary gift, with it comes the responsibility of stewarding that gift and not wasting it.

He was full of great one-liners (like the one on the poster just here). He once said: 'Some people create with words, or with music, or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say "I've never seen anyone run like that before." It's more than just a race, it's style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative'.

The guys cult-status and legend was phenomenal when he was alive. It has only grown since. As with anyone cut off in their absolute prime there is a sense of loss and frustration about the unanswered questions of what he might have gone on to achieve. Yet all this fuels the legend as well. How he ran, why he ran and his attitude towards running.

If you're still with me, all this is both a homage to a hero and a preamble to why I'm buzzing.

I was singing at Riverview tonight and happened to be wearing one of two 'Pre' t-shirts that I recently purchased.

So, the service is over and a guy called Ben Fields walks up to the platform and says 'I couldn't help notice your t-shirt, I went to school with Steve'. At this point I just about fell off the stage. Ben went to Marshfield High School with Steve Prefontaine. They ran together in the track team. I told Ben about my other 'Pre' T-Shirt. This one is a replica of a shirt that used to be awarded to guys on the team who racked up 2000miles in a season and has on the front 'Pirate 2000 mile Club'. Ben excitedly told me that he had that t-shirt. The legit version. I asked Ben what his event was. Ben was a mile runner with a PB of 3'59!! Yep, a bloke walked up to me at Riverview knowing I must have been a runner to be wearing a Pre t-shirt and let me know he was a 3'59 mile runner who ran with Steve Prefontaine. Yikes! Ben seemed a bit excited too! I don't blame him!

I could go on, but I'm tired. I hope this isn't the last of our 'You're Tops'. I doubt it will. There are a whole lot of incredible people out there. For very different reasons. Steve's just one of them...