Steve Prefontaine would be a Yuppie Runner today.

I wish I suffered "Gaston Roelants" syndrome. You have a great running career, are a feared runner in your prime (read Ron Hill's account of Roelants in Hill's book), and you cap it with an Olympic gold. You then hang it up, and then eat, drink and be merry--and are widely regarded as a cool guy.

j66j wrote:

Frankly, I think Prefontaine, were he alive today, would be a fat 60-year-old ex-runner (long retired). I think "Gaston Roelants" syndrome would be well advanced.

Burbot wrote:Just don't understand the love and respect for a drunk driver that finished 4th at the Olympics.|/quote|

Coke wrote:

4th at the Olympics is pretty good, bro.

Being a drunk driver is even better, bro!

Haha "slammed them into the damn ground and back flipped past the finish in WR time." That's what I'm talking about!

I did not read the entire thread, but Gaston Roelants was a world cross country champ and an Olympic gold medal steeplechaser. Where's the negative in that?

"At the end of his four years at the University of Oregon, Pre had racked up seven NCAA titles: three in cross-country, '70, '71, '73; and four in the three-mile in track, '70, '71, '72 and '73. Pre was the first athlete to win four consecutive NCAA track titles in the same event. He held eight collegiate records and his three-mile and six-mile records are still standing today. During his career he broke his own or other American records 14 different times."

Somewhere in all that, he managed to qualify for an Olympic final and could have gotten A medal if he hadn't been so insistent on wanting the gold one. Watch the last 3 laps of that race.

If memory serves me right, he NEVER missed a workout or track session in 4 years of "D I" practice as the younger crowd is proud of calling themselves.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone who's come close to this since. For an entire generation of runners, Pre was the model of going about the hard work necessary to improve. Not to knock the younger crowd, but this man's durability and competitive instincts make many of the younger crowd seem like a bunch of pansy assed posers.

Pre is dead. No one knows anything beyond that.

They don't get any more motivated than Tiger Woods. Look what happened to him. It can go both ways. Leave the speculation alone.

odelltrclan wrote:

They don't get any more motivated than Tiger Woods. Look what happened to him. It can go both ways. Leave the speculation alone.

That cat Woods has had a pretty good career.

ok, this is really so silly. he did have sciatic nerve problems near the end of his life and these kinds of physical problems often do not go away completely.

Pre would not have been able to affect the outcome of the US Olympic Boycott. Thinking he would have been able to do that is silly and thinking he would have been allowed to go and compete on his own is ridiculous. There is no way the IOC/IAAF would have let him go complete on his own.

He was absolutely NOT instrumental in the AAU losing the IAAF track franchise (which happened in 1979 five years after he died) and the end of amateurism. There were many many other athletes that were far more active than Pre in opposing AAU rule and amateurism. If you take away the Finland meet in organized HE ACTUALLY DID ALMOST nothing to oppose the AAU. He talked a lot about it. People like Hal Connolly, Dwight Stones, Jack Kelley, Don Kardong, Herb Lindsey, Tom Jennings, Frank Shorter, even Jim Ryun and, and a host of others did far far more in organizing athletes and challenging the AAU. Pre was very much an individualist, not a collectivist, by all accounts. To be fair he was headed in that direction, but he had done not all that much. Connolly had been organizing athletes for over a decade, since the 1961 US-USSR meet boycott.

He knew marketing well? What marketing campaigns did he direct? Evidence of this? he was charismatic and popular but I'm not sure that equates to being a marketing guru.

I am familiar with his work in prisons. It was certainly noble work.

I actually have no vitriol toward Pre. He accomplished more than most of us will in a drunk driving shortened life. That is a fact. I have hostility toward the hagiography that continues to build and build to mythic proportions and seems completely unstoppable.

He could have ended up like someone like Salazar, over trained, hurt, but still active and respected in the sport and attached to Nike. He could have ended up like Jim Ryun, fighting valiantly to produce at high levels with his body not cooperating and then moving on to be successful in other areas. (Although I disagree strongly with Ryun's politics, he has been an exemplary ex-athlete as a politician. If Ryun had died at 23/4 people would be writing much more complementary about him. I think his athletic career is disrespected routinely.) He may have ended up like, Shorter or Rodgers, having lengthy and successful competitive running careers that extended into his 30s. Or, he could have ended up like Henry Rono, battling alcoholism for most of his adult life and desperately trying to make a living while spending time in prison for unfortunate transgressions. (I wish the great Henry Rono only the best of luck in his current carnation as a high school coach. Although you all think I am a young kid who could not understand Pre because I was not alive, that is not true. I followed Rono's accomplishments in the late 1970s with awe and glee.)

The point of my silly original post is that you have no idea either what would have happened, but assume almost biblical proportion success in everything Pre would have touched, which is a silly exercise in sainthood. Beware all those who admit that Viren was almost the exact same age and a better racer and competitor, which is the point, to win the race, afterall. Oh, I know, Viren blood doped so Pre was indeed unbeatable and prefect as all saints and idols need to be. More accusations with no evidence all in an effort to bolster Pre to unbeatable sainthood status.

I'm getting tired and I have work to do. You can all go back to genuflecting and praying to St. Pre. I pray to no one. He was just a person, imperfect and with a messy life, just like me and you.

funny wrote:

If Pre were alive today: for example, see: Matt Centrowitz Sr.

There is no doubt in my mind that Centro is doing EXACTLY what Pre would have been doing had he lived.

This is the answer, only, I doubt he'd coach.

Pre wasn't good at marketing SMH. Go visit Bill Roger's Running store in Boston. There you will find a personal letter Pre sent Bill asking him to try Nike (who Pre was marketing for)running shoes. Rogers ended up winning his first Boston Marathon in the shoes Pre sent and everyone wanted to run in the shoes he was wearing.

I hear all this hate about Pre and it makes me sick. You guys are just pissed because most of you were losers in high school/college and Pre was cool. He got laid, had fun, and won races. He has inspired more people than any runner ever.

He would of ended up getting rich off Nike and had a smoking hot wife, but we will never know. If you die young you're cool forever, however for most of you Pre haters you were cool, never. Booom Roasted smd

OP: You are a moron. Don't start a thread about Yuppies if you don't know what they are. Pre would turn 60 this year.

Burbot wrote:

Who is Dave Whottle?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHid-nC45k

Again, I ask you, who is Dave Whottle?

Actually Pre was good at marketing. He was the first to suggest that he take shoes to meets and spread them around as a free sample to elite runners. And of course he used his image and fame to market products. He himself wore the shoes and that helps recognize a brand that was non-existent atthe time. That is what good salesmen and marketers do today, a whole bunch of free samples and using the product yourself.

The thing about Pre was not that he was perfect, or the fact he helped start a fight against the AAU (which because of his star status and death helped propel), but the fact that people just seemed to glow when Pre was around. There was something about Pre that just made people awe. And the fact that he ran every race all out (except his Olypmic 5k) just shows he had balls compared to today's runners winning U.S. Champs 1500m in 3'47.

And if you want to call him a drunk then fine. Like you never got drunk and driven. But, his ass was up everyday at 6am for a run.

I do believe you are bitter because you just weren't shit in running and no matter what you do you will be slow and pathetic just like you were in JR High. Stop jerking off to porn and grow some balls and do something other than criticize someone you never knew or do not care to know.

You all have not figured out that it's not Pre that I dislike at all. I've got no quarrel with Pre. He was human imperfect like all of us. It's all the people that idolize him and have a need to continue to raise the statute higher and higher each and every year. That I have a problem with. It is the ahistorical analysis of his role in some events, like the downfall of the AAU. This of course has little to do with Pre himself. It is one thing to idolize sport stars and have simple minded ideas about them when you are 10 years old, it is quite another to do so when you are 50 years old.

I am pretty damn comfortable that I was a pretty damn slow high school and college runner. Attack away. I've sort of grown out of thinking that being a great athlete makes one a good person. That's kind of the point.

Pre was like Henry V. He didn't rule very long but he left a big mark.

You may or may not have noticed that this phenomena is not limited to Pre or even athletes. Many people loom larger in death than they did in life. It's not that big a thing. Heck, maybe we'll even do it for you Sparky.

I was around when Pre was around and you are wrong. I DO NOT idolize but there is no reason to have anything against anyone who does. What does it matter to you? I coach high school kids, we have a very good program that consistently wins and many of the kids look up to Pre and have his quotes written on notebooks, etc. You know what? if it helps them work harder to become better runners- good. What bothers me is people like you who have no tolerance. It doesn't effect you at all if someone idolizes Pre, or Bekele, or anyone else they choose to idolize.

I'd prefer people remember me as I really was in death. Frankly, I think Pre wouldn't like all this nonsense either. He'd certainly think being stuck in the early 1970s is not a good thing and has been harmful for the sport. Maybe he'd acknowledge that that Steve Scott was a hell of a runner and competitor and a pretty darn thoughtful guy as his auto-bio demonstrates. Or that that Bob Kennedy guy raced pretty hard at the 1996 Olympics and had really a hell of a career. And he had to race against Kenyans that Pre did not have to. He'd probably think that Shalene Flanagan was tough as nails and he'd be right. But nah, let's continue to prop up that Pre statute, erect it higher and higher so that no one else could possibly approach it. I think the Pre-obsession--and it is an obsession--has been detrimental to the sport. No one else can possibly measure up, even though we have had more successful track athletes and more thoughtful track athletes, track pretty many actually. It makes it so current and more recent athletes can never be quite as much as Pre, no matter what they do.

Like I said, I've got nothing against Pre. He was a heck of a guy. 'd love to have a beer with him and talk. But I can also appreciate that many others have trained just as hard and raced with as much resolve as Pre. Yes, other athletes try hard and race hard too. I've seen it and so have you.

Maybe it's the baby boomer thing. The baby boomers think the entire world revolves around there particular time frame. But then why no love for Jim Ryun or Marty Liquori or Dick Buerkle (didn't he beat Pre?) or non-Amercians for that matter, like Yifter, who certainly had it far more difficult than Pre?

hey runn, that goes both ways. what does it matter to you that people think it is silly when adults idolize people? It's not like I start these threads. I just respond to others who do refuse to acknowledge what is really going on here. No one doubts that he was charismatic, but sheesh, that was 40 years ago. Hasn't there been anyone who has competed and been a good role model for your runners in the last 40 years?