Walt Murphy is one of the finest track statisticians that I know. Walt does #ThisDayinTrack&FieldHistory, an excellent daily service that provides true geek stories about our sport. You can check out the service for FREE with a free one-month trial subscription! (email: [email protected] ) for the entire daily service. We will post a few historic moments each day, beginning February 1, 2024.
This Day in Track & Field–May 30
(c)Copyright 2024-all rights reserved. It may not be reprinted or retransmitted without permission.
By Walt Murphy’s News and Results Service ([email protected]), used with permission.
1975–Steve Prefontaine died when his car overturned as he was returning home from a post-meet party shortly after running his final race at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
From Tom Jordan, the author of “Pre!” and the former director of the Pre Classic: “That I both wrote the book and ended up the director of the Prefontaine Classic sometimes seems almost mildly mystical to me. It’s not like I set out to become the meet director of the Pre Classic. I wrote the book while working at Track & Field News in California in 1977 and didn’t move to Eugene until 1982”.
“When the position came open in 1984, the Oregon Track Club asked me to take over, and I’ve been doing it ever since (he retired after the 2021 meet). That it was a meet named after Steve Prefontaine made it more than just a job. I really did want to see it reflect the impact he had upon my generation, and to have it help keep his memory alive. Thanks to the great support from Nike, we’ve accomplished that.” Interested folks can purchase the 2nd edition of the PRE! book, which has a totally different set of photos than the first volume, from amazon.com http://tinyurl.com/mcq5f4
Related links:
The Pre Chronicles–Taken from the pages of Track & Field News, this 19-part series covers Pre’s career from the beginning to the end. This final installment includes links to the previous 18 chapters:
https://trackandfieldnews.com/the-pre-chronicles-part-19-the-final-lap/
40 Years Later: http://grantland.com/features/steve-prefontaine-death/
Tribute Site: http://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=Prefontaine_Fredricksberg_Academy_03
“Without Limits”-Behind the Scenes:
http://without-limits.warnerbros.com/cmp/realaudio/main.html
“Fire on the Track”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnFTtodGHvk
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1260355/
