Pre's attitude of "run every race at a fast pace" was immature and frankly unintelligent

How many Pre-bashing threads do we need in one week? List every American distance runner in history, and you won’t find many that accomplished more in their first 24 years of life than Pre did. Show some respect.

We do know exactly what Pre would have done. Phil Knight is the ultimate running groupie, specifically Oregon running groupie, and he set up numerous Oregon graduates at Nike. But Pre was at an entirely different level, Knight would have set him up as his right-hand man. That's not a guess, that's the fact, Jack!

OK well if we accept this, then clearly Pre would still be famous, which is what I was pointing out as opposed to the poster who said he would have fallen into oblivion if he hadn’t died young.

Would love to see where this would go as an original post. I agree.

I was far too young to have ever watched Pre race, but when Nike put all the stuff out about him in the 90s I was in high school. His story was definitely inspirational to many runners (and I'm sure a lot of runners in the 70s) even if he was imperfect and died tragically.

Always trying to run your fastest is a winning mentality, and it made him someone to look up to from that perspective. Watching the Olympic 5k I think it's likely that he put the hammer down too suddenly on the final backstretch. Perhaps he was hoping to open a gap that wouldn't be able to be closed. In any case, I think the same thing that motivated him to make that move allowed him to be there. He obviously had ability, but also had a champion's mentality.

Finally, the tearing him down after his death (not legitimate opinions on his racing, but talking bad about the guy) is classless. When I taught a few years ago I was surprised around the 9/11 anniversary to hear high schoolers trying to be edgy by joking about it. I put ridiculing the dead in the same category. Immature and tacky.

As a Gen Xer I occasionally get a chuckle out of the "OK Boomer" stuff because my generation had to hear about how Important Everything About Our Generation Is from the Boomers for so long, but at this point it's really just going after grandmas and grandpas (which takes no courage). I suspect there's more than a little bit of the OK Boomer/Boomers took all my opportunities attitude behind these "edgy" takes.

I don't know that it is right to call Knight an Oregon running groupie. As you know, he actually ran for Oregon; he was not a hanger-on.

Your assertion is false because it IS FALSE. Pre never ran all-out from the beginning of his races. I don't understand where you got this idea?

Amen!

Look up Pres actual races. He ran plenty of slow and tactical races. The movie character version of Pre is not the actual Pre.

Perhaps, but it didn't actually favour him. His legacy is he got 4th in a race he had the talent to win.

7 NCAA titles. Pre's running tactics sure were stupid.

I'm not sure. I'll ask Elizabeth Leachman and Rachel Forsyth about it today at Foot Locker and let you know.

That was Pre's way of controlling the race. It was a challenge to his opponents to not sit behind him to draft. Was also the first public trash talker in track and field.

Pre was a system runner

Come on. If he didn’t always front-run and ran with more patience and better tactics he might have died an Olympic medalist.

It's a reasonable strategy for someone with a high VO2Max a small W' like Pre. Remember Pre got relegated to the 5000 for a reason.

I don’t understand why people think this. He ran a spectacular race in Munich and fourth in that field as a 21 year old was an excellent result. He pushed the pace not from the beginning but from a mile out when he knew his only chance was to try to run the kick out of faster finishers. It’s impossible to over-emphasize the guts it took to run like that and it just reveals people’s ignorance about that field, tactics, and Pre’s abilities and limitations that people feel so comfortable tossing around these lame claims. I understand he has a complicated legacy (as he should—although no one here ever talks about the advocacy he did on behalf of athletes against the AAU bureaucracy). But in Munich he ran a smart race and got the result he deserved.

Pre didn't always front run and didn't front run in the Olympics. I assume those that believe that he always ran from the front were not contemporaries of Pre's (and myself and a poster such as malmo) and have chosen to believe the myth.