Did Pre toke marijuana?

I'm not sure about the weed stuff but my jaw feels better after the early night !

thanks Pre

The best lesson anyone can learn from Pre is DON'T F*ING DRINK AND DRIVE.

If one investigates the circumstances surrounding Pre's death, then it becomes apparent that his drinking the night of the accident probably had little to do with what happened.

First, you would have to be familiar with the road on wwhich the accident occured. It is narrow, coming downhill, and around a turn (with rock walls on eithr side). Pre was on the right hand side, coming down the hill. As he approached the blind curve in the road (to the right), another car was in his lane (coming up the hill, the car was taking the tangent, crossing into Pre's lane). Pre could not go to his right (rock wall) and had to swerve violently to the left at the last second (as the turn was blind). Pre's MG hit the rock wall on the left (it is a NARROW road) and flipped. It would matter if Pre had been stone cold sober, he would have hit that wall. Any one of us would have had the same accident if we had been there.

The second car was also an MG, driven by Karl Bylund (the 20yr son of a Eugene Doctor). Bill Alvarado, who lived less than 100 meters up the hill from the accident site, heard the accident, ran outside within seconds, and almost got run over by Bylund's MG coming up the hill.

Bylund claimed he came to the wreck after it occured, and then sped home to get his father (the doctor).

The Eugene never pushed a case against Bylund, believing it was a one car accident with a drunk driver. Pre's blood alcohol test was .16, but the blood test was done by the mortician, not the medical examiner; and there are some questions about the accuracy of the test (although there is no dispute that Pre was drinking that night).

Pre had run that road and curve a thousand times, he had driven it a thousand times. Shorter had NO concerns about driving with Pre that night. Pre's parents were at the post meet party, and it was ont the type of occasion where someone was going to get 'hammered." The police say Pre's MG was still in 2nd gear, and he was going no faster that 25 mph (a reasonable speed on that turn). All the evidence seems to indicate that something forced Pre's car to swerve violently.

All of the above facts can be found in a story in the Eugene Resiter-Guard from May 26, 1885.

If you read a 117-year-old copy of the "Resister-Guard" you're unlikely to find a lot of facts about Pre's accident.

Here are the real facts:

1. Pre was drinking at a party.

2. Pre was involved in a fatal car wreck in which he was the driver.

3. Pre's measured BAC at the time of the wreck was 0.16.

All of the bullcrap about Frank Shorter's willingness to ride with Pre, the supposed difficulty of the stretch of road Pre was (one more reason to be sober while trying to negotiate it), and an eyewitness account of a one-armed man driving another MG is just that - bullcrap. It's the kind of stuff bad lawyers use to try to get their clients off and worse, the kind of stuff that keeps others rationalizing their own drinking and driving. What happened to Pre was terrible but you've done us all a tremendous disservice.

from someone who was there

Back to the original question, the truth is that Pre toked a few times during the off-season (mostly in 73-74) and that was it. I think the final tally was 7 times, but only once 72 or earlier. One of the times he didn't inhale, so if you're Clinton, it would be 6 times total. While a few of these incidents occured a few days after his last race of the season, none of them happened within 26 days of an upcoming race (and 4 of them were 50 or more days away).

Five of those times overall he caught a good buzz, but he was under control -- except for time number 5 (4 if you're Clinton) when he did the ol' lampshade on the head thing, walked into a tree (not hurting himself) and had a 158-second giggling fit (some timers got it at 157 seconds).

Well said. The Pre apologists make me sick.

"Facts Emily"

You have missed the point. The discussion about pre's death, and my post regarding the accident is not about whether "Drinking and Driving" is a good thing or a bad thing. I think most people (including myself) would consider drinking and driving a "bad thing." One should always wear one's seat belt as well.

You have cited three "facts" about pre's death, but you have ignored deveral others:

--there was a second car on the scene

--an eyewitness states that the second car appeared to be in the vicinity of the accident at the time it occured

--circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that Pre was not falling down drunk, or even visibly impaired

--police reconstruction of the accident indicates that he was not speeding, but all of a sudden veered violently to the left.

People can believe what they want about the accident, but what really irritates me is the effort by those, like yourself, who want to use Pre's death as some sort of object lesson about "drunk driving", when in FACT, is is possible, perhaps even likely, that "drinking" had little to do with what happened.

I am not an "apologist" for Prefontaine. From all appearances, he did drink a lot (and sometimes, from what others who knew have told me, hecould be a real ass when hammered). That does not mean (or "prove"), however, that he was drunk when he had his accident, or that "drinking" was the reason for the accident.

BTW, nice catch on the Registar Guard story, it was, of course, 1985!

emily,

im sure you're a social sciences major-

because you eschew gathering all the facts to "prove" points to your end

read the FACTS from a firsthand source:

http://home.europa.com/~bence/pre/pd.htm

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS WITH THAT REPLY

lotta science in there.

Yeah, and wasn't there a third car coming from the grassy knoll??

The only "facts" that have any importance in my mind are:

1) Pre was drinking

2) Pre was driving

3) Pre died

I'm a big Pre fan, I wish I had half the guts to race the way he did. It just sucks that he died in such a STUPID way.

Don't F#ing drink and drive.

And wear your f*#$ing seat belt!

first hand accounts from people who were with pre that evening!

what "science" tips over a car going 25mph and leaves skid marks?

Hey,

Who cares? Why do you even bother posting such a silly question. This is almost as good as who would win in a marathon, Ritz or Webb.

Thomas

Who would by the way? Or did someone ask that already?

Let's get real.

It was practically impossible to find marijuana in Eugene in the early 70s.

Scott Farkus wrote:

Not almost everyone back then was. You need to get learn history from somehting other than the movies. By the way, there weren't that many hippies in the 60's either. The majority of Americans have always lived pretty typical lifestyles ...

I learned the history of that era the best way - by being there. Throughout the country, most people toked up. Didn't make them "hippies," just part of that era. Listening to politicians these days who say they didn't produces two reactions from people of that age: 1. They're liars. 2. They were wierdos of the type I'd never trust enough to vote for. All that being said, runners did get a pass on smoking without being considered wierdos because people understood their need to keep their lungs clean.

I bet Pre probably took a few tokes every once in a while. The guy was into partying. And it wasn't that uncommon. That being said, I doubt he was the type to be often found walking around with a big-ass Bob Marley joint. We would have heard about it by now.

As for the drinking. I agree with those saying that, if anything, the portrayel of Pre's drinking is understated. I have heard of and seen many instances of high-caliber All-American runners just getting completely obliterated. Granted, an elite level runner isn't going to be doing this a few times a week like your typical college rugby player. However, runners, even great ones, are no strangers to drinking. And drinking too much every once in a while isn't going to completely jeopardize your running. (I almost said wouldn't kill you, but that would be kind of going against the whole theme of this thread involving Pre)

I do think that drinking, not some mystery car, was the main impetus for Pre's death. You don't need to be falling down, wetting your pants drunk, to have had too much to drive.